Kunoichi, a female parahuman mercenary
by twosmall
Summary: Orochimaru was a shinobi who wanted to be an immortal and learn every jutsu. Taylor knew he was really a parahuman being pushed towards conflict by his passenger. Either way, if he could resurrect her, then shouldn't he be able to resurrect her friends? It was an opportunity she couldn't pass up.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This is a crossover between Naruto and Worm. I don't claim anything in either work. They are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and Wildbow respectively. If you haven't read Worm, I recommend checking it out. It's about a teenage girl who gains a superpower, her attempt to become a superhero, and her life as a supervillain._

 _A/N: This story has a ton of spoilers for Worm. Don't read it if you haven't read Worm. Worm is better written. Go read Worm first._

I was on my back. Above me I could see a clear blue sky completely empty of clouds. The sun was out with enough force that I felt it's hot kiss against my skin. It didn't kiss all of me though. My skin felt wet and cool in some places, like someone had taken a tub of sunscreen and used it to draw shapes all over my body. Beneath me, grass pricked against exposed skin. I was naked.

I felt disoriented. None of what I was sensing was lining up with my memories. I remembered dying. I was a little out of it, but I was still pretty confident that people didn't go from getting shot in the head to laying in grass staring at the sky. It wasn't just my memories that weren't right though. It was everything. I felt tiny and fragile.

"Ku ku ku." The noise was a cross between a laugh and a bad impression of a songbird. I couldn't see the source, so I tried to let down the wall that separated me from the senses of the insects I could control. It didn't work. My power wasn't there. Panic tore through me. The sort of panic someone feels when they realize they are both blind and paralyzed. I'd spent years with my powers. For me, they had become like another sense and extra limbs. I felt their absence keenly.

I tried to snap my head in the direction of the noise. Even without my powers, I still wanted to know what was going on. It didn't go like I expected. My body didn't do what I told it to. Instead of my head turning, my limbs came into view. Tiny limbs. Baby limbs. I was a baby. I tried to shove the horror of what I was seeing away. To push the excess emotion into my insects, like I did so often. I couldn't though. I didn't have my power.

Had to keep it together anyway. Freaking out wasn't going to help me. Arguably, I'd been in worse situations than this. I'd been drowning, while cut in half before. Being a baby didn't really compare to that.

The flailing as I tried to move wasn't helping. So I stopped trying to move. I was having the same issue Regent had when he used his power to take people over. I had to relearn how my nervous system worked, before I would be able to move. This was bad. I was helpless. I couldn't use my power. I couldn't move my own body. Even if I could, I was a baby. Whoever was laughing, they had me beaten.

"Trying to look at me, hmm?" The voice was smooth, but I couldn't understand a word they were saying. It sounded Japanese. Had Lung survived? Had he gotten some Tinker to work for him, so he could get vengeance on me?

The man who stepped into view looked like a Case 53. He was human in shape and his long black hair made him look feminine, but there were so many things that were just wrong. His skin was far too pale, an actual shade of white. His eyes had yellow irises and slitted pupils. A pair of purple triangles ran down the sides his nose, but they had a quality to them that made me think skin-color and not tattoo. I'd seen stranger case 53s. I'd seen stranger people with normal powers too. Either way I wasn't the sort of person who held their abnormalities against them, especially since he still looked human.

He smiled at me. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

I tried to get some control over the situation.

"Waa-" I cut myself off and stopped trying to speak. I had intended to ask who he was and what he wanted, but I didn't have my tongue and mouth under proper control.

"Can you understand me?" The man was staring down at me intently. He cocked his head. I gazed back. "If you can, move or make a noise."

During the fight that had led to my death, I'd given up a lot. For a while, I hadn't been able to speak. This was different. I was thinking clearly. If someone spoke to me in a language I understood I was going to be able to understand them. The problem was language.

"Unfortunate. I was rather certain the seal would work. Unless… Of course. You don't understand the language I'm speaking, do you? A lot can change in a thousand years."

I was growing frustrated as he continued to talk. I had just fought to save my world. Sacrificed everything. Now I was here. Helpless. Not able to move. Not able to speak. Not able to understand. Was he going to kill me? Was he trying to help me? I had no idea.

"Very well then. A different approach." The man's hands teleported in front of him.

The world shifted around me. I wasn't laying on my back staring at the sky anymore. Instead I could see a grassy clearing in the midst of a forest filled with trees so thick that even when I'd been an adult I wouldn't have been able to wrap my arms all the way around them. The strange trees weren't the only weird thing. The clearing itself was bizarre. Someone had taken black paint and smeared it along the grass in various patterns.

The man was in the clearing too, at the center of both the clearing and the large rune like drawings. A brush was in his hand and a wooden bowl of black paint was beside him. He was painting a baby with the brush, drawing black lines on their skin.

That was me. He was showing how he had brought me back. That baby was me.

The scene shifted and I was in a black void. In front of me was a baby. It grew rapidly, aging a year every five seconds. The baby was female, like me. When it reached its teens the scene shifted again.

The man was back and the teen was there too. The man gestured with his head, a beckoning motion. Then he walked away and the girl followed him.

Reality lurched again and I was back in the clearing, the pale man staring down at me.

It would be easy to see all of that and assume that I was just hallucinating, but before I had been in the body of a baby I had seen a lot. In my teens, I'd been a rather infamous supervillain. Later, I'd become a superhero. I was used to strange powers. The idea of being in a crafted illusion wasn't something new to me.

So I kind of got that the guy was trying to tell me how things were. He was explaining that he had resurrected me, that I would be growing up, and that he expected me to follow him. The thing that I didn't understand was why he thought I would go along with it. He hadn't explained that part. There had been no threat of pain and no promise of reward. No incentive at all really.

I tried to grasp what he was playing at. Why he was doing this?

The man's hand came up to his chin. A classic thinking pose. We were lucky, sometimes those sort of poses didn't cross cultural barriers. Or maybe were weren't. I already knew he was a cape. Given everything he'd shown so far it was clear his powers were varied enough that I couldn't rule out him being a Thinker.

"I have questions for you about the past, Kherpi. Many questions." Again speaking in a language I couldn't understand. "But how to show you that?"

I tried reaching out for insects again. I'd had my power disabled in the past, but the effect hadn't been permanent. I was hoping that it was the same here. That with a little time I'd go from a defenseless baby to a baby with the power to control every insect within a few hundred meters. Unfortunately, whatever had my power disabled hadn't weakened. It wasn't even like it had been when it was disabled either. Then, I'd at least been able to use my power subconciously.

The man's hands teleported in front of him again and my world lurched.

I was in a room with the man again and before us was a puzzle laid out on a large wooden table. It was the sort of puzzle where pieces had different shapes and you had to fit them together to make an image. Some of it was put together, showing a tapestry that showed the evolution of man. Other parts showed a woman spitting out a fireball and a man swinging a sword. The middle was empty though.

The man gestured toward me in the illusion. Not my viewpoint, but the teen girl that I knew he intended me to understand as myself. She moved forward and began putting the pieces together. It was clear that she already knew what pieces went where. There was one problem though. The pieces she was putting together were blank. There was no drawing on them.

After she snapped together a large section of the puzzle, the man set down paints and brushes. The teen reached out, picking them up, and then the world lurched again.

I was back in the clearing and the man was looking down at me still.

Again, I felt as if I understood what he was hoping for me to understand. He wasn't looking for me to follow him. He was looking for answers to questions that he thought I could help him with. Which explained why he had brought me here, but didn't explain why I would actually want to help him. I wasn't exactly getting a vibe from him that suggested that he was the sort of person I should trust.

His hands teleported again. This time the scene was of the sky. The sun rose then moved across the sky and set. It rose again. Then set. Faster and faster it rose and set until the days practically flickered by. Trees rose and fell around me. A river formed and then dried up. A fire raged by, leaving the area black. Then the black was rapidly overtaken by greenery again. Time passed, hundreds of years were whirling by in moments.

The message was obvious.

This man had resurrected me. He was from the future, the distant future, and he wanted answers about the past.

I came out of the illusion again in the clearing gurgling. I was happy. Relieved. We had won. We had saved the world and life had went on. People were still around on at least one Earth.

A thought occurred to me. He had resurrected me. If he could do that, well, then couldn't he resurrect others too?

The man smiled down at me. "Ku ku ku ku. Excited to work with me are you? And to think, Jiraya and Tsunade said that I wasn't good with kids. Well, their right of course. I have no intention of raising you. Not when I can let my enemies do it for me and gain another set of eyes and ears among the Leaf to boot."

The man's hand's teleported again and-


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Tērā in Japanese means tailor in English._

I woke again and the pale man that had resurrected me was gone. I was in a crib. Soft fabric was beneath me and I wore a cloth diaper.

I wasn't alone.

A hand glowing with a pale green light was touching my chest. I tracked my eyes up from the hand to a white arm and then still further up to the blue fabric of a shirt sleeve. Then I finally found her face. A blonde haired woman, with an etched metal plate sewn into a dark blue cloth tied around her forehead.

It was pretty obvious that she was a cape. The glowing hand kind of gave it away. She smiled down at me and my entire body relaxed. I wasn't comforted by her. It was physical. She was doing something to me with her power.

I was against that. I could tolerate with the guy who had brought me back to life; he just used his power to communicate with me. I'd even be willing to have him use it again to let me know what this girl was doing. Right now though? She was changing how I felt without my consent. That screamed Master power. Considering that from my perspective it hadn't been too long since I'd Mastered pretty much the entire world? I didn't trust someone to Master me. Hypocritical? Definitely. Still, I thrashed and tried to make noise. I hoped that the message the message was clear. Stop. Do not use powers. Not consenting.

The woman's eyes widened. Then she did something that made the pale green light gain even more intensity. I thrashed harder and started screaming in earnest. The woman's hand was on my chest. Then she moved so fast that I couldn't even see the movement and her hand was on my head.

I went still and stopped crying, freaked out by the sudden movement. She frowned down at me, but then looked away towards something out of my line of sight. Her hand stopped glowing. After a few seconds I heard footsteps from the direction she was looking.

"I heard crying?" The voice was male and it wasn't one that I recognized. I couldn't understand him either. Was I in Japan? Had Japan even survived Scion's rampage? Was I even on Earth Bet right now?

"Don't worry Aburame-san," the woman said. "She's fine. I think she was frightened by me, even though I used a medical ninjutsu to help keep her calm. It was unusual, but I think maybe… maybe the last time she woke up with a ninja over her…"

"That bastard." The other voice sounded pissed.

"It's only conjecture."

It was frustrating not be able to understand the two of them. I hoped that the brain of a baby was better at learning a language then the brain of an adult. Better yet, a cape could use their power to grant me the ability to communicate. I wasn't looking forward to months and months of not being able to understand anyone. Of not being able to feed myself or bathe myself or even deal with the bathroom.

"No. I think you're right. He said he didn't harm any of the children. But a snake like him? I don't think we can trust him to keep his word." The other voice sighed. "I suppose I should feel lucky. Why? He told us he was going to kill them if we didn't concede to his demands, but the Fourth was much faster then he anticipated."

"It could have been worse. You're right. I'm going to go check on the other children and make sure that they are okay. I'm done here, so you can stop fretting and check on your daughter yourself. Hang in there Shibi."

One moment it was just the woman there. The next a man was there too. His hair was brown and spiky and he wore dark goggles over his eyes. Like the woman, he had a dark blue headband with an attached metal plate. There were triangular etchings on the metal of the plate. I didn't recognize the symbol, but the fact that both of them wore the same headband told me they were part of the same organization.

I put together that he was a Mover too. He had appeared in a moment. Maybe teleportation? I felt a little uneasy at that. I'd been seeing too many Movers in too short a period of time and it was setting off alarms in my head. First the pale man, then the woman with the glowing hand, and now this man. Was there someone that worked with them that could grant others power, like Othala or Teacher could?

I didn't know enough to say for certain.

The blonde woman set a hand on the man's shoulder. "She's alright. I'll be in the other room if you need me."

Then she walked away and the man looked down at me.

"How are you doing Tera?"

I stared at him, uncomprehending and the man's lips went from creased in a small smile to flat. He was sad. Disappointed. I wasn't responding the way he wanted me to respond. Who was he? What was he expecting from me?

"What did he to you little bug?" The man's words sounded pained. "Don't you remember your daddy?"

I blinked up at him. What sort of things did a baby do? What was he expecting? Obviously he didn't want me to cry, right? Had the pale guy filled him in yet about me not knowing his language? Really, we needed to get that guy back in here if we were going to make any progress on the communication front.

The man reached down and picked me up. I squirmed and that made him frown, but it didn't matter. He had me. I was a baby and he treated me like one.

As he moved me closer to himself, I noticed something that I had missed before. He had holes in his neck and beetles were moving in and out of those holes as if he was some sort of human hive. It brought back memories. Bonesaw explaining she was going to turn me into a nest for insects. My boyfriend, alive and in agony, his skin still attached to him but spread out to coat an entire wall. Bonesaw cutting into my skull.

All pretense that the situation was under control vanished. The man holding me ceased to be a man and became something a hundred times more terrifying. He was a Bonesaw experiment. That sick girl had been practicing for me, she hadn't forgotten about me. She was still going to turn me into a hive. I'd been cut in half before. I'd been face down in shallow water with my back broken. I'd been been trapped in a burning building. None of those times came close to the sheer terror I felt as I realized that _Bonesaw_ had me and there was nothing I could do to escape.

Last time I was in Bonesaw's power, I'd tried to kill myself. This time, I had even less hope of escape. I flailed and screamed anyway. Tried to slip loose from the grasping hands. Tried to find some way to fall towards the floor.

"Shh... sshh..." The Bonesaw experiment was rocking me against himself. Trying to comfort me as I tried to squirm and fall out of his hands to land head first on the floor. "It's okay. I'm here. It's okay."

I flailed harder, but I couldn't slip his grip. Then I realized I was going about it all wrong. I went still and acted like he had succeeded at comforting me.

He pulled me a bit away from himself, holding me a bit more loosely now, and smiled. I twisted and squirmed. Slipped from his hands. I fell maybe an inch before he adjusted, catching me.

Damn.

"Slippery girl, aren't you Tera?"

He was holding me more securely now and on-guard for another attempt at suicide. What other options did I have? He would need to feed me eventually. I could try to choke myself. That was a danger with babies, they could eat something too big for them.

The terror had faded a little. Having a goal helped. Even with the terror gone though? It was completely rational for me to want to end my life. Bonesaw's tinker specialty might as well have been fates worse than death. Cherish might still be alive right now even though she no doubt wished she was dead. There were few capes that could grant both immortality and an eternity of suffering. Bonesaw was one of them.

So yeah. I wanted to commit suicide before she could get her hands on me. It might not even be enough. Death might not save me from her. Bringing people back from the dead was something Bonesaw had done before. Wait. No. Death definitely wouldn't be enough to save me. I had been dead.

Fuck. She had brought me back.

It wasn't a conscious decision on my part, but I started crying. It felt natural and right and I think a lot of the reason I was doing it was because of instinct rather than intent. The spiky haired Bonesaw experiment grimaced. His nose flared, twice. "You didn't go potty. You didn't want me to pick you up. Are you hungry?"

I kept crying as he babbled at me. The way he was acting, the concern? It didn't even strike me as particularly meaningful anymore. Bonesaw had tended to act like an excited and innocent young girl. It was only when juxtaposed with what she was talking about that she seemed like a monster. It could be the same here. For all that he acted concerned, I couldn't understand what he was saying. For all I knew, he was whispering about how Bonesaw was going to turn me into a sack of regenerating flesh and then feed me to a colony of bullet ants.

The man carried me out of the room into a hall. The floors were wooden, but the walls were all an off-white canvas material.

There were other people in the hall. Unlike before, I knew to be watching for small black specks moving around the people. So I was able to pick up on the fact that the guy holding me wasn't the only Bonesaw experiment. Apparently, she had gotten to the entire family.

It was only when he handed me off to a woman for breast feeding that I realized that trying to get fed wasn't the opportunity for choking to death that I was hoping for.


	3. Chapter 3

After feeding and burping and getting cooed at, I started to realize that my Bonesaw theory didn't make sense. It explained almost everything, but it didn't explain the illusion that the pale man had shown me. Call me optimistic, but I decided to hope that a fate worse then death wasn't waiting right around the corner. So I stopped trying to kill myself and started trying to figure out what was going on.

The man who had picked me up was holding me in one arm while talking to the women who had breast fed me. He was jostling me, bouncing his arm up and down, and the motion was making me sleepy.

I yawned.

"I'm worried about Tera," the man said. "The med-nin said that there was nothing wrong, but she's been acting so differently. I don't think she even recognized you."

Tera. I'd heard that word more then once. People tended to use it while looking at me. I was starting to think it might be my name.

They were talking about me.

"I noticed too. Did you see how reluctant she was to eat? What do we do though? There's not exactly a field guide for what to do when Orochimaru kidnaps your daughter," the woman said. She had a headband on too. So many capes in the house.

They were saying something about breast feeding? Right? They had used words like that when trying to get me to eat. Or… I yawned again.

"We'll take her to a Yamanaka for a mind walk to see what's going on. Why? Because we need to know more about what happened to her to understand how to respond."

The jostling was really making me… tired… I blinked a few times. My eyes felt heavy.

Had I missed something?

"Ahh," the woman cooed. She was looking at me. "Is little Tera tuckered out?"

* * *

I woke in my crib. Above me a thin wooden bar was hung to the ceiling by wire. Hanging from the ends of the bar were two toys, a stuffed beetle and a hopefully plastic throwing star. I stared up at them, confused, because it didn't make sense that the bar was rotating in circles. Was it tinker-tech? Had whoever was taking care of me made some sort of tinker-tech baby entertainment tool? It was an absurd idea, but it wasn't like the toy was connected to a power source Maybe the wind was moving it?

I shifted in my crib and looked around. No windows, but there were runic drawings on one of the walls and they were facing the toy.

I figured it was tinker-tech. The super-white guy must have come back while I was sleeping and set things up to be a little more entertaining for me. I appreciated the thought, but somehow I felt like maybe they hadn't gone quite far enough. If all I had to pay attention to was those toys I was going to go insane.

Lisa would have realized that. I wished she was here with me. She'd be smart enough to make sure Theo never caught wind of me. Theo was a friend, but I'd shot his baby sister through the head. So I wasn't inclined to have him around my baby self. I wished Alec was here too. He would have been able to give me advice on how to control my body. Really, I would have settled for anyone I knew. I felt alone.

I needed a goal. Something to distract me from my emotions. I didn't want to think about where I came from and the things I had done. I decided to try to get a grip on my body.

I fidgeted trying to get a sense of what went where. When I tried to move my head, my left leg tensed. When I tried to move my left leg, my right arm lifted. Curling my big toe made my foot move. It was bizarre, but I wasn't complaining. I was lucky to be alive.

Things got strange when I realized my heartbeat and breathing were under automatic control, because when I realized that my heart stopped beating and I was no longer breathing. I panicked and somehow that kicked me back into automatic and I was breathing again. I could still feel my blood rushing around beneath my skin, which didn't make much sense to me. Shouldn't I be dead? My heart had stopped beating.

After several long seconds, my heart started beating again.

No. No, that wasn't what happened. My mind was playing tricks on me. My heart had never stopped beating. There was something else going on. Gushes of something came from near the center of my chest and traveled throughout my body. Somehow I'd been taking it for blood moving around in me without thinking about it, because what else could it be, but it wasn't that.

It was hard to describe what I did next. It was intuitive. I just made the flow stop spurting forth. Huh? I started it again. Stopped it. Each time I did that the flow of the not-blood inside me shifted. It went faster and slowed down depending on whether I kept my not-heart active. Did I have a new power? Not bug control, but something else?

I reached out again. This time I didn't reach for my not heart. I reached for the not-blood. It was harder to work with, but I could move it too. Faster. Slower. I could push it around. It could even leave my body.

I let out a gasping breath and realized I was sweating. I felt like I had just had a work out and trying move the not-blood was hard. The not-blood reminded me a bit of my muscles right after I'd tried to do push ups for the first time only for my arms to give out on me.

I settled back into the softness of my crib's blankets. Maybe if I just rested for a few seconds I'd feel better? My eyes closed. I didn't close them. They closed. I couldn't keep myself awake.

* * *

I woke again. It was darker than it had been before and I was hungry. Really hungry. My diaper was also wet. Damnit. I was a bit ashamed of that. Against my will, I started crying. Loud wailing cries.

I stopped myself. My body had instincts. Reflexive things that it did, like crying when it needed something. I still had conscious control of myself. I could choose to do things differently. It was a choice though, like someone could choose to hold their breath, it went against the natural flow.

The woman who had breast fed me came into the room. One of her hands was glowing with blue light that helped offset the darkness, but didn't do much to fully illuminate the rest of the room. She wore some sort of light fabric. I assumed they were her pajamas. She didn't have the headband on from earlier. She walked over to my crib and yawned while looking down at me.

"Forgot momma, but not how to wake me up in the middle of the night, huh?" She rubbed at her eyes with the hand that wasn't occupied with being lit up with blue light. She smiled at me. "S'okay. I didn't forget you sweetie. Never will." Her nostrils flared and her expression changed. Her nose crinkled and she grimaced. "Ugh, I hate this so much. You grow up quick, okay?"

I was mortified beyond words. I was a baby in most of the ways that counted and there wasn't anything I could do to get around that. She picked me up. It was time for a diaper change.


	4. Chapter 4

I was the Warlord who had taken over Brockton Bay. I kidnapped one Director of the PRT and killed two others. I'd carved out a man's eyes and chopped off a woman's toe. People had feared me enough that they weren't willing to press their advantages even when they had me cornered. I was three months old when I managed my first word.

"Kicachu," I babbled.

Shibi, my dad, smiled at me. "Kikaichū."

"Kicaciuuu." Talking was difficult. I was going to master it though. Had to.

"No. It's kikaichū Tera. Can you say kikaichū for daddy?" Shibi tickled me.

I squirmed and giggled, but I got myself under control as soon as he stopped. I was determined to get this right. "Kiaciicu."

"Kikaichū," my dad said.

"Kikaiiicu. Kikaiicuu. Cuu." I took a breath. "Chuu. Kikaichu."

My dad's eyes were wide behind his dark goggles. "So close. It's kikaichū."

I smiled. "Kikaichū. Kikaicuuu. Chuu. Kikaichū!"

My first word meant trump bug.

* * *

Time passed. I learned. I grew. Six months had changed a lot. I understood my situation a lot better than I had before. My parents were parahuman mercenaries that served the government. After I put my days of villainy behind me, I'd had a similar job. Mine had been a bit different though. I would refer to myself as a cape, but the work my parents did wasn't just playing at being heroes or villains. Things had changed a lot. The idea of parahumans working as Rogues had gained acceptance. So they did cape stuff, but they also did mundane things too.

Unfortunately, Konoha's version of maternity leave only lasted for six months. So I was being left with my Aburame grandparents. They weren't even going to be in the house with me. They had bugs monitoring me and if things went bad they would head over to handle them. I wasn't excited about it.

"Tera, even though you want me to read to you, I cannot. Why? Because I'm a shinobi and must serve my village."

I pouted.

It was so fake and I felt immature for doing it, but sometimes my dad would relent at the childish antics. I wanted him to relent now, even though I didn't hold out much hope that he would. Each interaction I had was making a huge difference in my mental development. More then one might imagine, naively. It was like each conversation I had and each new thing I did was worth a month of study. The closest thing I could compare it to was the passage of time. When I was growing up in my first life, time seemed to take so much longer to pass when I was young. Then as I got older it seemed to pass faster. Something about lacking experience was making my experiences much more meaningful.

My dad sighed. "Tera, pouting is not the way to respond to me needing to leave. Why? Because shinobi code twenty five states that a shinobi must never show their tears."

Shinobi. If I were to translate it to English I would translate it to cape mercenary or parahuman mercenary, but the language was gendered. So shinobi was a bit closer to saying, male parahuman mercenary. If he had used the word kunoichi it would mean something like female parahuman mercenary.

This wasn't the first time he had mentioned shinobi rules in relation to me. As I'd grown more able to understand what was going on around me, I'd gleaned that it I would grow up to be one of those mercenaries. Given my past life, that wasn't something I was against. I'd thrived as a cape, but floundered when I'd just been a normal girl. Spending my life as a civilian wouldn't have been something I wanted for myself even if my dad hadn't planned to mold me into a kunoichi.

I was still disturbed. I tried to express what was bothering me in words. "Why teaching baby to be a kunoichi?" I asked.

He frowned. "I teach you to be a kunochi. Why? Because shinobi rule number thirteen says that a shinobi must prepare before its too late."

I pointed at myself. "Baby."

His eyes widened and I could see him brighten. He understood what I was saying. He smiled. "No," he said. He pointed at me and then poked me in the chest. "Not baby, Tera is a kunoichi."

Wow. That was fucked up. Like, so incredibly fucked up. I closed off, my face becoming a blank mask to disguise just how much I hated what he was saying.

"See," Shibi said. "Tera kunoichi. Not baby. Tera's a good kunoichi, not showing her emotion."

So. Fucked. Up.

I turned away from my dad and toddled my way toward the scrolls about chakra, the cape power that pretty much everyone on this version of Earth could access. It wasn't a textbook on the stuff. It was a children's story about the power. I preferred that to dealing with Shibi Aburame, the man who thought it was fine to raise a child soldier.

I glanced behind me when I reached the scrolls and realized he was gone. People here, everyone wearing a headband at least, were fast enough that my eyes couldn't track them and quiet enough that I only heard them coming when they wanted me too. He'd probably left the second I turned away, to go do work for the village.

I plopped myself down in front of the kanji covered scroll and stared at it. I couldn't read. Not yet at least. However, I did remember my dad reading it to me. My eyes tracked over the scroll as the memory of him reading it to me played in my head.

There once was a little boy who loved his family very much. But then the evil rock ninja came and took his family away. The boy was very sad, but he knew that if he was ever going to get his family back he needed to be a true shinobi. So instead of crying he exercised for his body and studied for his mind, and his chakra grew…

How did the kanji correspond to the words? I puzzled over it, scanning and re-scanning the text about the young shinobi of the Leaf. The story was about a boy who found out that even with his entire family gone, he had a new family made up of everyone else in the village and was stronger for it.

It was my favorite story so far, because it applied to me so much. It seemed like a propaganda piece in some ways, but for me my whole world was gone. So I could sympathize with the orphaned boy.


	5. Chapter 5

When I was seven months old, the nine tails attacked Konoha.

I didn't know what was going on. All I knew when I woke up was that I was terrified and felt as if I was about to die. That doesn't quite get across the feeling. It transcended description. For a while, I actually hallucinated. I saw claws tearing through the wall and coming down on top of me. I could picture teeth the size of my entire body piercing me. The terror was so great that I knew it was some sort of Master effect messing with my emotions. That helped me cope.

Still, I was shaken badly enough that I didn't go out to investigate. Instead I stayed still and quiet within my crib. Outside, I could hear people screaming. Kyubii. Bijju. Nine tails. I heard loud bangs and I felt the ground shake.

Maybe twenty seconds after I woke, my dad came into the room in a burst of speed. He was breathing hard and his hands were shaking. "I-it's okay," he stuttered. "It's going to be okay. I- I'm here."

Shit. This was serious. Shibi was freaking out. "Dad what's going on?" I asked.

He didn't answer. Instead he picked me up and pressed my face tight against his chest. Then my vision started to going black. We were moving, fast. Far too fast for a baby to move safely. I thought I was going to pass out. Then we slowed.

I was a bit disoriented, on the verge of passing out. I couldn't see anything, because my dad was holding me tightly too to him. He was probably doing it so that the sudden execrations didn't snap my neck. We moved again. This time I really did black out.

I wasn't sure how much time had passed, but when I came too I was in a cave surrounded by women and other children, most of whom were pretty out of it due to the master effect. They were crying, screaming, and some were even trying to kill themselves while others tried to stop them.

A black haired adult woman with brown eyes was kneeling over me, her hand glowing with a pale green light as she moved it up and down my body. I felt the utter terror pressing down around me and ignored it.

"It's okay," the woman cooed. She didn't sound convincing. "It's okay. He can't get us here."

"I'm fine. What's going on?"

The woman didn't react like I expected. My calm freaked her out in a major way. She thew herself away from me and got into a fighting stance, like she expected to face off against me in some sort of karate bout.

From my place on the floor of the cave, I boggled at her. Then I realized she wasn't faring much better than the rest. What was she? Thirteen? Fourteen? The village was getting to me. I saw the headband earlier and I thought adult, but she wasn't. That was just the culture I lived in telling me she was adult.

All I had done was be an overly developed baby. Not really astounding by the standards here since something about everyone having a superpower tended to make a lot more child prodigies. Still, I was definitely exceptional. It would have had to be somewhat retarded not to be, what with the entire second lease on life. That surprising amount of competence on my part combined with being calm was enough to push the gennin in front of me into a panic.

I pushed myself up a bit. I needed to calm her back down. Best to act less intelligent than I was. Give her something she expected, make things more normal. "You help others?" I asked, playing up the baby-talk.

The woman looked down at her hands, as if she was seeing them for the first time. Then she nodded, a jerking motion, and moved away from me towards a woman who had a piece of wood pierced through her leg.

The cave shook and for a moment whatever seals were built into the place to give us light flickered. I heard someone moan and a baby about my age started crying.

The Master effect was getting to people. Messing with them. There wasn't even anything here hurting anyone, but everyone's morale was shattered. I still didn't know what the hell was going on.

I stood and made my way out of the cave. We were in the Mount Rushmore like mountain face, the Hokage monument. At a guess, I'd say that the cave was Konoha's version of an Endbringer shelter. My dad hadn't taught me about that yet, but I wished he had.

It was easy to guess why we were there too. I'd never seen this Endbringer before, but it was massive. Easily twenties stories tall. It looked vaguely fox-like, with pointed ears and a snout, but the resemblance broke down there. A fox only had one tail. This thing had nine. They were waving casually, but the forest behind it was getting completely destroyed by waves of wind. Trees were ripping free from the ground and hurtling through the air behind it.

If it waved one of the tails towards me, I was going to need to run back in the shelter. Well, toddle really. I was getting better with the whole moving around thing but I wouldn't call it easy. I was pretty sure I'd make it in time regardless. The thing was far away. More then a mile. It wasn't even inside the city.

It turned toward the mountain and opened its mouth. Towards me. A purple ball formed and I had enough experience with powers to know things were about to go bad for me.

Oh shit. I turned and ran back inside, but I was far too slow. Shit. I glanced behind me and the beam of energy was already-

I stopped running. It had been right there. I'd seen the light of it. Dozens of feet away. Blocking out everything. My vision was still dancing with spots from the brightness of it. It had been right on top of me. Then it wasn't. What had happened to it?

In the distance, the light re-appeared and slammed into the giant fox. There was an explosion, a massive ball of light and fire. People were pushing by me, entering the shelter. I dodged past them, heading back out, trying to watch the fighting.

A thunderous sound roared around me. Seconds later I felt strong hot wind that sent me stumbling backwards.

The explosion faded. There was tons of dust and the like, but the fox was so giant that even with the debris it was still visible. The giant fox was there still, but it wasn't facing the village anymore. Thankfully, it wasn't facing directly away from the village either, which would have set us up for incidental destruction from it's tails.

There was now another massive creature there too. A giant frog, holding a katana. Some sort of Master power? A projection? I didn't have time to get a closer look, because the fox and frog charged each other. The two forms flickered. There was a flash of yellow light. Then the frog and the fox were gone.

I looked down at the village. Fires blazed out of control. Half the houses were rubble. How long had I been out? Surely not more then a few minutes?

A woman entering saw me staring and picked me up and I let her carry me back into the supposed safety of the shelter. I didn't feel safe though. If that light had hit the mountain, the rock between us and it might as well have been paper.

Two days later I would find out that my mother, Shikaro Aburame, had been killed while trying to help set up barrier seals.


	6. Chapter 6

I was four years old and trying my damnedest not to think of the horror that I had been subjected too. My insides were in pain and tickled as bugs moved beneath my skin. Aburame weren't born with their colony of trump bugs living inside of them, but now that I had my own I was quite confident that I wasn't a parahuman. If I was going to trigger, I would have triggered then.

I didn't want to think about it.

I focused on the bugs instead. The beetles were small winged creatures and they were extremely fast and strong compared to bugs back on Earth Bet. In terms of speed they deserved a Mover rating. In terms of strength, I'd compare getting plowed into by a swarm of them to be a lot like getting punched or kicked by a ninja. They were no joke. If Panacea had made me these instead of relay bugs, I would have been a very happy girl.

But it wasn't even their strength or speed that made my clan famous. The most notable thing about the trump beetles that lived in us was that they ate the stuff that fueled powers and then brought it back to their nest to deposit it for future use. My bugs were doing that now. Flying out of me. Landing on flowers and the like, then flying back into me and dropping back off the chakra before.

It was strange though. Every time they dropped off chakra, I remembered everything they had done and seen since they had last eaten my chakra as if they were one of the insects in my old swarm and I had been paying careful attention to them.

"Dad, you didn't mention I could sense through my bugs?"

Shibi and me were both sitting down in a lotus position across from each other in one of the Aburame clan's dojos. Some older Aburame kids were here too. Academy students using the clan dojo to practice their katas.

"It's true that I didn't mention it." Shibi said. "Why? Because it will be many years before you will be able to perceive through your colony. Their thoughts and senses are alien to you, only time will change this. Focus instead of giving them orders. When they take in your spiritual chakra it forms a link with them and you. Find that."

I considered what Shibi was saying. Apparently seeing through the insects was normal, but not something you learned by practice. Instead it just happened over time and I was absurdly advanced at it. It wasn't hard to imagine why I was more advanced. I'd had the power to control bugs in my last life and that came with the ability to be aware of the senses of every single bug within my control. My mind had already learned to use insect senses. It had dealt with millions upon millions of bugs.

When I was a baby my parents had taken me to a mind reader to have me checked up and the fact that I wasn't their daughter had very nearly been revealed. The only thing that had saved me was that the Yamanka that had handled the memory reading had gotten extremely confused. I could sense millions of insects and he hadn't been able to process my memories as a result. He had looked at a good chunk of them and concluded that Orochimaru had put my in some sort of horrible time dilation torture genjutsu when he'd found a memory where I was drowning to death while cut in half and turning into a monster.

"I found it a while ago, I just didn't say anything. But I don't think you understood what I meant. I can already sense through them," I said. "Really well, as if they were my own senses."

"Hmm. I've given an order to some of the bugs I have outside the dojo to form a word on the wall. What word is it?"

Reaching out, I sent an order toward the bugs that were gathering chakra. It wasn't the precise control that I had once had and I couldn't target it as effectively, but the flip side was that the bugs were a lot smarter. I didn't have to micromanage them as much. If I sent a message saying I wanted some of the bugs to return with scouting information, they would coordinate among themselves and send back just a few rather than everyone.

Eight kikachu returned to me and landed on my skin. Then awareness bloomed. I pointed at the wall behind Shibi. "You wrote my name there."

Shibi smiled. "You're already better at this than your daddy Tera. Why? Because I'm still learning to sense through my colony."

I shrugged. "I still can't use chakra as well as you can."

"Don't worry little bug. I'm very proud of you. Why? Because now the Aburame have joined the Uchiha in producing a once in a generation prodigy and ours is my daughter."

I ordered some bugs on me to eat my chakra and then immediately release it back into me. I lost some in the process, but there was a flicker of awareness. I sent another order. Feed while also placing the food back in. The awareness was continual this time. It was only for the bugs on my skin, but I could finally use my bugs to sense the environment in real time.

I smiled. I felt like someone who had been born with sight, but lost it, finally getting corrective surgery. I could see again. I could finally see again. Even better, I had my limbs back.


	7. Chapter 7

Lunch at my first day of the academy reminded me that bullying was a thing, not just on Earth Bet, but here in Konoha too.

"Hey big forehead! Why are you even here, huh? Your not a real ninja. You're parents aren't even from one of the clans."

"Yeah. Shouldn't you be at home picking flowers and playing with dolls. This is a school for kunochi, not little girls."

"It's not her fault though. If she had a brain instead of a giant forehead she would have known better and never bothered showing up."

The three girls started to giggle.

The people who were talking weren't talking to me. They were talking to a pink-haired girl. The girl wasn't taking the bullying well. Her shoulders were hunched, she was leaning down, and she wasn't making eye contact with her abusers. She was cowed. Cowed by three seven year old girls. I didn't recognize any of the three as belonging to one of the major shinobi clans.

They were taking turns speaking. It was something I was familiar with. It let them bully without the victim getting a chance to get in a word edge wise.

"Maybe she thinks she's strong? She knew she had a huge forehead, but she was still walking around even with it weighing her down."

The insults were lacking. They weren't exactly mature, especially by shinobi standards. That didn't matter to pink hair. She was immature too. She couldn't see how pathetic the entire thing was. She was just realizing that no one was on her side. That the staff was looking the other way. She was at the bottom of the social ladder and she knew it. Nobody was going to help her.

I was at her side before I'd even realized I had decided to help. I didn't regret stepping in. I put my hand on the girl's shoulder and she flinched. "Don't worry about these three. Their too immature to realize how stupid they are."

The pink haired girl looked at me, mortified. She didn't want to confront them. She was just going to take the abuse and walk away when they were done.

The three bullies turned on me. They took in the beetles flying in and out of my clothes and their eyes widened. They didn't recognize me, but they definitely recognized that I was an Aburame. They were kids though. So that didn't mean they had an implicit respect for the clan. "Ew!" The leader shrieked. "How can you stand having bugs in you? Get away from us. You're even worse then forehead girl. No one likes you."

"Yeah freak. Just leave." One of the syncopates jumped in.

"Name calling? Really? What are you, seven?" There was a pregnant pause as everyone digested what I had said. The fact of the matter was that all of us were seven.

"Of course we're seven? Did the bugs eat your brains or something." The leader folded her arms.

"Bug brain!" The girl beside her chirped, looking smug.

"No. It's just I'm not seven." I brought up my hands and ran through the seals for the henge. I transformed into an older brown haired women wearing a chunnin vest. I pitched my voice a bit to help me sound a bit older and had my bugs fly out around me, spreading to make it look like there was more of them then there really were. "I'm one of your instructors. When class ends today you three are going to be staying behind with me for detention. You'll meet me here for it and when we're done I'm going to be giving you a slip for your parents to sign that explains what I caught you doing."

That shut the three girls up. The pink haired girl was taking it differently though. She looked absolutely ecstatic. Her mouth was partially open as if in awe and her lips were tilted in a slight smile. She wasn't hunched over herself now either.

"Now get out of here," I snapped. "And don't go spreading that some staff are pretending to be students. We like to nip problem kids like you early. Better this way then having you get gutted when you say the wrong thing to the wrong person."

One of the bullies lost their composure. "Please don't tell my mom. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was just-"

She stopped talking, my glare silencing her. Apparently an Aburame with a buzzing cloud of insects behind them was pretty intimidating.

"Leave."

She and both of her friends scurried off.

The pink haired girl stared after them. Then she turned to me. Her voice was pitched low in an intense and awed whisper. "You can't do that! You can't just pretend to be one of the teachers."

"What are you talking about? I'm one of the staff."

"But… I saw you do the henge hand signs? So you can't be."

That actually caught me off guard. One thing I'd learned almost as soon as I arrived was that people here were so fast that an untrained eye couldn't keep up. When I'd seen Orochimaru put me in a genjutsu, he had done it by using handseals, but from my perspective it just looked like his hands and arms had teleported into clasped position.

I wasn't as fast as that, but I wasn't the average academy student. My family compared me to some Uchiha prodigy that had graduated early. They were really proud of me and had been pushing me. If it wasn't for fairly new laws, I would probably have been allowed to graduate to gennin within the year. The fact that the girl had kept up with my hand speed said really good things about her. She was talented. Especially if she hadn't had previous training.

"Good eyes. You got me, though maybe don't mention that to the three bitches?" I dropped the henge. "I'm Tera Aburame."

The pink haired girl blushed and looked down. "Sakura. Sakura Haruno. Thanks for helping me. I… I don't mean to have a big forehead."

I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. She didn't get it. She was still young. Too young to get that they were being cruel because they weren't good people, rather than because of there being some truth to what they were saying.

I would have hugged her, but I knew better than to do that. I was a living hive and sometimes little girls were really irrational when it came to insects. So instead I settled for telling her the truth. "Sakura, you're foreheads fine. Those three are just bullies."

She looked up at me. "You think so?" I smiled. "Yeah."

My back was turned to him, but through a bug hidden in my air I could see that Mizuki-sensei was watching me again. Though to be fair, Iruka-sensei was too. My chunnin impersonation hadn't went off without a hitch.


	8. Chapter 8

"Wow," I said, staring at the ceiling. "I can't believe we got screwed over this hard."

Sasuke frowned at me, still sitting at his desk having never hopped up after the class ended. Naruto on the other hand was exploring. With the sensei out of the room, he was treating it as a chance to go look in Iruka's desk and pick up chalk and the erasers.

I could tell that Sasuke wanted to ask me what I meant. The thing was, Sasuke was kind of messed up when it came to social things. Worse than Rachel in a lot of ways. He didn't like it when people tried to push themselves on him; so trying to talk to him even when he was giving me signals that he was interested in doing it really didn't appeal to me. It wouldn't do me any favors in the long run.

Sasuke grunted and looked away from me and back at Naruto. Naruto had two erasers in hand and he slammed them together. Clap. Plumes of chalk dust flew in the air and Naruto hammed it up letting it get on his face and starting to sneeze. It was an act. Naruto had problems too. He wanted attention and he acted out in order to get it. I didn't buy for a second that someone with literal ninja reflexes wouldn't be able to move their head away from slow traveling chalk dust.

"I see what you mean. I can't believe we're on a team with that loser." Sasuke was also an asshole.

Naruto tensed even as I cut in, preventing him from flipping out.

"No," I said. "You don't know what I mean. I'm not talking about Naruto. I know some of the older students and recognized the name of our sensei."

I stopped talking and Sasuke was staring at me again. I waited for him to ask. He looked away again, letting out a frustrated huff. He was smart enough to realize that I was trying to provoke him into asking, but too stubborn to go along with it.

Honestly, it was probably for the best that Hatake would be our sensei. He was sure to fail us and we probably deserved it. This team dynamic? It was utterly fucked. Naruto had social issues. Sasuke had social issues. I was looking forward to abandoning the leaf village at some point to see if I could figure out how to resurrect my friends. We weren't a good team to the point that we couldn't even hold civil conversations with each other. I'd been on teams with people that I'd literally choked with bugs that had more chemistry than the one I was on now.

I couldn't really blame either kid for being a bit out there either. Torture genjutsu and your entire family being killed was pretty extreme. The idea that he would just grow up without problems was kind of idiotic given the level of trauma Sasuke had been through. Then there was guys please treat me like I'm a little kid and not an Endbringer waiting to happen Naruto. Ugh.

We spent the next five minutes in silence before Naruto got bored of messing with Iruka's desk. He spun towards us. "I'm bored. This sucks! Where's our sensei, huh?"

I met his eyes. "I don't know where he is, but for what's it's worth, I agree with you. This does suck."

Naruto stared at me like I had slapped him for a moment. Then he looked away. He was almost timid. For all that he was constantly getting attention, which was what he wanted, he didn't know how to handle it when he got genuine attention. It was so alien to him. I'd tried to give it to him years back, but he'd flipped out became of my bugs. Hopefully he'd matured more since then.

Sasuke snorted. "You shut the idiot up."

That Naruto understood. He looked back at me. Smug. Almost delighted. He understood being slighted, even though it hurt him, but instead of letting it put him down, he pretty much fueled himself with it.

I sighed and looked to Sasuke. "You know what's really stupid? Insulting your teammates when they're the ones that are going to be protecting you when your out on missions."

Sasuke rolled his eyes at me. "Like I'll ever need the help of the dead last."

I turned to Naruto. Trying to talk to Sasuke was useless. Better to talk around him. "One day, when we're actually out in the field, Sasuke's going to overextend. He's good, but no one's perfect. When that happens Naruto, don't hesitate. Save him. Even when your teammate fucks you over? Have his back. You need him at your back and he needs you at his. You can't function as a team without that."

I was talking from experience. I'd actually been betrayed by teammates before, but instead of turning on them afterward we had found a way to work it out. The fact that I managed to earn Rachel's friendships is one of the things I'm more proud of about my former life. She wasn't easy to get along with, but I didn't regret befriending her.

"I'd never abandon a teammate." This time Naruto kept meeting my eyes.

After a few seconds, I nodded. "Good."

Naruto grinned. "Hey why are you so creepy anyway? You're always like…" He hunched down a little and made a constipated face. "I'm Tera. You don't know me. I'm much older and smarter and stronger than you. Don't treat me like a little kid or else." He finished off the rant by drawing his finger over his throat and then cocking his eyes back while making a contorted face.

What? Actually, no. He wanted me to respond by freaking out over what he had said. That was what he did. He tried to get a rise out of people. "Naruto, don't try to push me away. I'm your teammate and we need to be able to work together."

He jabbed his finger out at me. "See! Your all mature and stuff and you act all serious. You're supposed to get all offended and tell me how you're not like that."

I sighed. "I am offended, Naruto, but think about it. Is me yelling at you going to help us be better teammates?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah. It will. Emo boy over there," Naruto tilted his head towards Sasuke. "He needs to learn to lighten up and its our job as his teammates to help him."

"Shut up dead last."

"Make me bastard." Naruto growled, stepping toward him.

Sasuke stood. "You stupid enough to try again?"

"Beat you last time didn't I?" Naruto countered.

That caught me off guard. I had given up on keeping things civil and turned away from the conversation, but at Naruto's words my head snapped over to Sasuke looking for confirmation.

He glanced at me, saw me looking, and both his fists clenched. He didn't say a word to me about it. Instead he looked back to Naruto. "You caught me off guard with a cheap trick. I won't fall for it again."

Fuck. Teenage boys. I had thought Emma was bad and to be fair she was, but this was ridiculous it its own special way. "I'm over this," I said. I stood and both boys didn't pay me much attention. They were in a staring contest and I think they were both just planning to let me walk in front of them and break up the impending fight. When I didn't do that, but instead headed for the door, they turned away from each other and looked to me.

Naruto wasn't angry. He looked confused. Half the antagonism with Sasuke was just because that was how he was. Sasuke was really angry though. His brother had fucked up his head pretty hard. "Where are you going?" Naruto asked.

"Hokage tower. I'm going to try to see if I can get on a different team, since I'm betting Hatake is just going to fail us. Or that maybe he already did, since it's been thirty minutes and he still hasn't shown up."

Naruto's mouth dropped open. "Wait! I'm sorry. I'll stop. I just thought…" He trailed off. I wondered what he had actually thought? I almost wanted to ask, but knowing Naruto he would probably perk up and then rub the back of his neck while admitting that actually he hadn't thought about anything.

"Don't worry. It's not just you. I mean, yeah, you're playing a part in it, but it's like I said earlier. We're getting failed. We just have to accept that and move on with our lives."

"What do you mean?" Naruto asked.

"The sensei they gave us fails everyone. I know some of the people in the older classes that were pretty good, but he failed them. So I figure since he's going to fail us anyway, I might as well do the entire prepare before its too late thing rather than just sitting around."

Naruto shook his head. "Not what I meant. What do you mean by fail us? I thought we already passed the gennin exam?"

Sasuke hadn't said anything and his face was a blank mask, but he was staring at me too. For a moment I was a bit confused. How could they not know that getting an elite jounin sensei was a privilege that only about a third of gennin got, leaving the majority stuck with academy sensei? Then I remembered who I was talking to. One kid whose entire family was dead. Another who was an orphan. They were just as clueless about that sort of thing as Sakura who came from a civilian family. Information security in the village was too good for them to pick up on things just by chance. Details about what Konoha's elite jounin were doing was something that people were expected to keep quiet, implicitly.

"Jounin don't grow on trees and they get to decide whether or not they take a team. From what I understand, Hatake tends to fail every team. That's pretty much all I know about him."

"What?" Naruto shouted. Thankfully, he didn't keep shouting, but his voice was still a bit too high for comfort. "No fair! He didn't even give us a test or anything! How am I supposed to be Hokage if I don't have an awesome ninja teaching me all the super cool techniques?"

You use your pocket Endbringer? Instead of saying that, I shrugged. "Good question and one you'll need to figure out. Anyway, do you want to come with me? Might as well, it's not like this Hatake guy is showing."

Naruto nodded. Surprisingly, Sasuke nodded too. I headed out the door and the two boys followed.

The Konoha academy was considered strategically important, so it was located right next to the Hokage tower, and the entrance to the town shelters. The idea was that it reduced the number of places that needed to be defended in an attack, which was pretty useful when ninja battles could be so fast that they could span an entire city and so full of subterfuge that having to run around the entire city during the fight was a recipe for disaster. That closeness helped us to make it to the tower quickly.

I hadn't been in the tower often. I could count the number of times I'd been there on one hand. Once when I'd been four years old and had to come in to have the fact that I was a Konoha civilian whose body needed to be protected if I died to shield clan secrets related to our trump bug implantation. Another when I was eight because I'd taken the entire pretending to be a chunnin thing far enough that I got in trouble and they decided to put a stop to it by acting as if they were going to throw the book at me. Then just a few days ago I'd gotten my shinobi ID card.

So I didn't really know what I was doing. I hadn't been there a hundred times or anything like that. I looked around, conscious of the boys who were following my lead, and Naruto especially who would make an utter scene of this if it became clear that I didn't know what to do. There were hallways. A staircase. Then there was the chunnin sitting at what amounted to a reception desk.

I headed for the reception desk. "Hi. We're team seven under Kakashi Hatake. He didn't show and it's pretty much an open secret that he doesn't want a gennin team. I was wondering what we should do next, since he failed us?"

The chunnin's eyes flicked to Sasuke and then back to me. "I'm confident that this is a misunderstanding. Kakashi's the sort of shinobi that tries to be unpredictable in his schedule. You should continue waiting for him."

"Okay. We'll do that, but I'd also like to transfer to another team, even if it means giving up the shot at having Hatake as my sensei. Are there forms for that or…"

The chunnin's face was a mask of professionalism. "These are the papers you'll need to fill out for a team transfer. It's subject to approval from the Hokage. Just bring it back to me when you fill it out."

I took the papers.

"I'd like one of those forms too. I don't need a dead last weighing me down," Sasuke said.

Naruto looked away from us. It was a small thing, but I think I would rather he have tried to stab me. I could practically hear his thoughts. They don't like me. They don't even want to be on the same team as me. I'm a failure. Fuck. Okay. New plan, don't make an enemy of the Endbringer container. "A third one for Naruto too? It would be cool if me and him could get away from Sasuke together."

Naruto looked back to me and gave me a smile. It was a small one. "Yeah! That bastard thinks he's so cool, but he wasn't even rookie of the year."

"Shut up dead last."

"I might be dead last, but at least I'm not the first to lose, eh bastard?" Naruto stuck out his tongue and Sasuke scowled. The chunnin handed the paper to Sasuke and Sasuke practically ripped it out of his hand before stalking away to go fill it out while further away from us. Naruto was practically giddy about taking his own form.

The chunnin watched Sasuke go. "Huh," he said. "Well I guess I can see why you figured you were going to fail. Though, honestly, I think you're underestimating your chances."

He didn't agree that we would fail? "Your acting like you expect Hatake to pass us."

"Well yeah." The chunnin shrugged. "Last Uchiha? Of course he has to take him on."

"Fresh gennin?" I pointed at myself. "Whatever your hinting at? I still don't get it. Mind saving me the trouble and filling in the details."

Behind me, a white-haired man with a forehead protector covering one of his eyes walked into the tower. If I wasn't watching him through the eyes of my bugs, I wouldn't have even heard him enter the room. He was quiet; quieter than any ninja I'd met, ever.

"Kakashi!" The chunnin in front of me called. "I think you misplaced your students?"

I turned to look at my potential sensei with my own eyes. His one eye looked throughout the room. First to Sasuke. Then to Naruto. Then to me. "Hmm… my first impression of you… how can I say this? You're all worse then trash."

The chunnin manning the desk laughed. Sasuke and I both started filling out our forms.

Naruto pointed at Hatake. "What the hell happened to your eye cyclops-sama?"


	9. Chapter 9

To say that things started off badly between Hatake and I was an understatement. He narrowed his eye at me, practically scowling, as I filled out the form. "When you're done with that," he said. "Meet me on the roof of the academy."

It didn't take me or Sasuke long to fill out the form. Naruto was another story. He dropped the form like it was a hot potato and chased after Hatake. "Hey, wait up! Wait for me!"

Sasuke and I caught up to Naruto at the door of the academy after a brief jog. When Naruto realized that, he scowled and then re-doubled his speed. They both sprinted into the academy building, heading for the stairs.

I walked up the side of the multi-story building. Inside I could hear Naruto was shouting about how he was going to beat Sasuke, believe it. They were so… childish. Which they should be, because they were still children, but it bothered me.

"You don't move like a gennin." Kakashi commented, eyeing me from where he sat at the edge of the roof.

"The academy doesn't allow early graduation anymore," I said. A sensible decision. I'd been kind of relieved to find out that I wasn't the only one who thought the idea of a six year old borrowing the troubles of a cape fight was a pretty bad idea. "Sasuke's the same as me. I've seen him use elemental jutsu. The only one who should really still be a gennin on this team is Naruto."

"Not what I meant," Hatake said, his voice light. "If you get comfortable with me, feel free to share." He crinkled his eye at me.

I pushed my unease out into my spiritual chakra and had the trump bugs swallow it. Thankfully, the boys were up moments later, joining us on the roof. So I didn't need to answer him.

Naruto wasn't happy. Sasuke's face was a blank mask, but even if I hadn't known Sasuke had won their impromptu race, I would have been able to tell he had won by his posture. Little things like the way his shoulders were straightened got across that he was feeling confident. Then he saw me and scowled, which cheered Naruto up.

"First to lose," Naruto crowed. "Sasuke you were first to lose! Your not so fast now, huh, bastard?"

Hatake ignored the lack of team chemistry. "Alright. Now that we're all here, how about we introduce ourselves. One at a time."

I glanced at the boys, well at Naruto, because I figured he would want to go first. He didn't. So I did. "I'm Tera Aburame."

"Sasuke Uchiha."

Naruto glanced at us. "Uh, Naruto Uzumaki. Believe it!"

Hatake crinkled his eye and his face-mask bent in a way that made me guess it was hiding a smile. "Kakashi Hatake."

I couldn't help it. I smiled back. "Well, looks like we're all introduced," I said.

"Maybe we should get to know each other a little more?" Hatake said. "Likes? Dislikes? Hobbies? Dreams?"

I spoke first again. "Alright. So, things I like… I'm a big fan of the tech that Ame was exporting before they closed their borders, I don't like the bloodline purges and think Konoha should intervene, and I'm kind of a workaholic so I spend most of my time training. As for dreams…" I want to resurrect my friends and family. I shrugged. "I'm still young. I'll think of something."

Sasuke spoke next. "I hate a lot of things and I don't particularly like anything. What I have is not a dream, because I _will_ make it happen. I'm going to restore my clan and kill a certain someone."

Words echoed in my head. _Not a promise, not an oath, or a malediction or a curse… inevitable._

Naruto was staring at Sasuke like he was crazy, but after a moment he rallied. "I like cups of instant ramen and I especially like the ramen Iruka-sensei got me at the Ichiraku ramen shop, but I hate the three minutes you have to wait when making ramen. My hobby is trying different kinds of ramen and comparing them…." Was his dream to eat the tastiest ramen ever? Was this really going to be the person I would have to rely on out in the field? Naruto gauged are reactions and realized we weren't getting visibly annoyed with him for joking. So he switched tracks and got serious. "My dream is to become the greatest Hokage. Then all the people in the village will stop looking down on me and start respecting me."

"I suppose that leaves me. Hmm. I like dogs. I dislike people who abandon their teammates." He looked at me. Not too subtle this Hatake. "I'm not interested in sharing my hobbies with you. As for dreams? Well, I suppose I've never really thought about it."

"You like dogs?" I asked. Common ground was good. "Do you have any as pets? I like them too."

"Several. I hold the dog-summoning contract."

He had gotten a hold of a dog projection fuinjutsu? That was pretty slick. Summons were rare. I'd seen them only a few times. Once when I was a baby, when the Fourth Hokage had been fighting the Nine Tails. I hadn't seen a summon that big since, though I'd seen an ape-projection when the Third Hokage visited the school and showed off for us.

"I think we're talking about different sorts of dogs. I meant that I liked natural ones. Still, I'd love to meet your dogs some time."

"I'll be sure to introduce you," Kakashi said, his eye crinkling and his smile hidden behind his facemark.

I briefly considered trying to draw Naruto or Sasuke into the conversation, but decided against it. If I asked Naruto about the one thing he was serious about, being a Hokage, that would set off Sasuke. If asked Sasuke about things related to that time he was tortured and his entire family was slaughtered, that would also backfire. Hatake was the only person who I could talk to about their introduction without setting off social landmines. "So how did you get your summons?" I asked. "No one in my family has one."

Hatake stopped smiling. "My dad left the contract to me. I got it after he committed seppuku."

Well fuck. Weren't we a wonderful team. No issues here, certainly. Still, he was sharing something about himself with me. I needed to reciprocate. "Oh. I'm sorry for your loss. My mom… she died during the nine tails attack. It's not the same but…" I trailed off.

It was kind of heartless in a way. I wasn't happy my mom had died, but I hadn't really had the same love for her as I'd had for my real mom, Anette. I'd only known her for six months and for most of those six months I was struggling to learn the language. Now I was trading in on her death to help create a healthier team dynamic.

Naruto shifted to look away from me and his hands clenched, hard. He knew. Since when did he know? A silence stretched out awkwardly before Hatake switched topics.

"Well I'm glad to see that each of you is unique and has your own ideas. We'll have our first mission tomorrow."

What? I had thought we had to do a test. Had my information been wrong? Not for the first time, I was annoyed that I couldn't answer every question that I had by consulting Tattletale or doing a few web searches. The Elemental Nations had electricity, television, and many other advanced systems, but it didn't have the industries that my old world had had. The technologies were closer to relics of a time long past. Ame was one of the few nations that had the technical expertise to both fix and create the technologies that I had once taken for granted.

There was no such as an internet here, let alone a wiki. So in order to find out things that weren't recorded as a part of history in textbooks and the like, I had to ask. Which, in a ninja village, didn't work very well.

"What kind of mission are we going to have?" Naruto asked.

"It's a task that the four us will do together," Hatake said. Yeah. Figuring out what was going on even when I asked could be maddening. Hatake wasn't the only one who could be infuriatingly vague.

"What? What? What? What?" Naruto babbled, excited to hear more. He hadn't picked up on the social cue to drop the question.

"A survival exercise," Hatake hedged.

"Huh?" Naruto asked. I suppressed my glee at having him here to bulldoze past the social barrier that usually prevented information spread. "Survival exercise?" He scratched at his head. "I thought we were supposed to have a real mission, not practice."

"This is not like your previous training."

Naruto didn't let up. "What kind of training is it then?"

Kakashi started laughing and I smiled.

"What's so funny?" Naruto asked.

"Well if I tell you the answer, you're not going to like it. Of the twenty seven gennin that graduated from the academy only nine will pass. The other eighteen will be weeded out and sent back to the academy. In other words this a make it or break it pass fail test. And the chance that you fail is at least sixty six percent." Hatake chuckled again.

He hadn't told us anything about what we would actually be doing, but Naruto didn't notice. He was too busy staring at Hatake, horrified at the idea that he would be failed.

"See… didn't I tell you you wouldn't like it."

"Thats crazy we worked hard to get here. Believe it! What was that graduation test for anyway?"

"Oh that. That was just to select candidates that might become gennin. Or not."

"What!"

"That's how it is. I decide whether you pass or fail. Be at the designated training spot at five AM and bring your ninja gear."

Designated training spot. That was probably the grounds that Iruka had mentioned in relation to our team earlier that morning. Five AM though? That didn't sound fun.

"That's it your dismissed. Though tomorrow you better skip breakfast or you'll puke. Tera, stay behind for a bit. I need to talk to you about something."

When the boys had left, Hatake walked in a circle around me, eyeing me. After one circuit, he stopped in front of me. "You're good, but you're still a gennin. It's going to be a few years before you can sneak anything by me. I'm feeling nice, so I'm going to give you a few minutes to convince me not to drop you off in T&I."

"Kai!"

"Not a genjutsu and not a good use of your time."


	10. Chapter 10

_A/N: I got a review that mentioned Shino was a clan heir and so that made Taylor a clan heir. This isn't true. Both Kiba and Shino were not clan heirs, that's fannon. Only Hinata, Choji, Shikamaru, and Ino were heirs to their clans. In the case of Shino, his father's political capital was so low that Danzou was given permission to take his son, despite Shibi being against the idea. The only thing that stopped that from happening was Danzou accepting Torune in Shino's place._

 _A/N: Another fun-fact is that the first time in cannon we see Kakashi he isn't getting hit in the head by an eraser. He's busy investigating the background of his future team. This characterization is highlighted further when Sasuke introduces himself: instead of being surprised like everyone else Kakashi's internal dialogue suggests that Sasuke is just like he suspected._

 _A/N: The previous chapter was modified to give more information about why Tera is both skilled and yet also so uniformed, reduced the degree of antagonism displayed by Kakashi, tried to better get across the way in which Tera see's Naruto and Sasuke (she's an adult; in cannon Naruto's the sort of kid who literally sits on the floor while facing away from the ruler of the village complaining that no one takes him seriously), and tried to increase the degree to which Tera attempted to promote good inter-team relations._

I hadn't done anything illegal recently. So it almost seemed paranoid of him to think I should be taken in for interrogation. Saying that didn't strike me as a good idea though. Hatake was competent. He was observant enough that he could pick up little things, like the way I used chakra even when walking normally to provide better traction. So assuming he was paranoid was probably a mistake. He wasn't just making an accusation. He thought he had something on me, something that really could justify me being taken away to interrogation. Or did he? If he really had something, then wouldn't he have just taken me there?

What _did_ he know? That was the information I needed. It would be utterly absurd to think he knew that I was resurrected, given what I'd done, but there must have been something or he would never have done this.

"Would you mind filling me in on what has you so worried?"

He shrugged. "Sure. Let's start from the top shall we? You've got a technique to control your emotions, but it has a tell: your bugs get agitated and I can hear the difference. From that I know you're not happy about me acting as if you're anything other than a gennin and that you're hiding something about your dreams."

Was that all he had? "I'm assuming that isn't all? If it is, then this is ridiculous."

"You're not just uneasy around me," Hatake continued. "You didn't want to be around me in the first place. You tried to avoid having to be a student under me."

There were rumors about him failing everyone and he hadn't shown up. That, combined with how poorly my teammates got along, had convinced me we were pretty much doomed to being failed. "You didn't show up… and then when you did you insulted us."

This wasn't adding up. The things he was sharing? They were small. They weren't the sort of things someone would make an enemy of the Aburame over. He was throwing things at me and hoping to get a reaction. Whatever he knew, it wasn't what he was sharing.

"Then there are the smaller things. You say you like dogs, but you don't smell like a dog and I know for a fact that the Aburame don't keep any dogs. You're trying to build an emotional connection, since avoiding me failed. For good reason too. You suspected a jounin would see through you. And I have."

There was no way at all that he was actually sharing what made him suspicious. Absolutely no way. He wasn't giving me a chance to explain myself. If he really knew something serious? He would do something about it. No. What he was actually doing was trying to con me. He was putting me in a rope factory. As long as I didn't say something really stupid, he was going to back off and say I convinced him. Still, he was pretty sure something was off with me, because even doing this was something that could cause problems between us.

I didn't say anything. I just met his one eye and waited for him to go on.

"You're instructors said you were competent," he continued. "Too competent. I was inclined to ignore that until I met you, but now that I have I agree. I've heard you compared to Itachi and he was a _traitor_." Again he was playing up the idea that I was guilty of something. "You're instructors have said other things too. That your answers to your homework are hinting at something and that you might be passing messages to agents outside the village…" Passing messages? That made no sense. It was complete bullshit. I hadn't done that. I did know things about blood limits that others didn't know and I had suspicions about chakra, but nothing definitive. That wasn't reflected in my assignments though. Not intentionally at least. He hadn't stopped talking. "… They also say that you manipulate the other students. That you don't respect authority and don't conform, which is a big red flag for an Aburame. Worse you've pretended to be a chunnin to advance personal agendas."

"I was already talked too about pretending to be a chunnin and I haven't done it since. As to my assignments? Those accusations are baseless and any examination of them will reveal that. I don't know what you're pulling here Hatake, but I think we're done here."

"We're not done," Hatake said. "That was just what the teachers mentioned, it isn't what I found when I started investigating you through your family. Novel techniques within months of getting your colony? Not suspicious on its own but you were kidnapped when you were a babe and no full mind walk was conducted, because the attending Yamanaka was hospitalized after experiencing what he called a time-dilation torture genjutsu."

My heart was hammering in my chest. Had he really figured out that Orochimaru resurrected me, like he was implying? I tried to stay calm, continuing to use my bugs to help manage my emotions. It might have a tell, but not using my bugs would have just as big a tell and reinforce the idea that I had something to hide. "I think we're done here," I said. "If you want to bring me into T&I, we'll see how that goes for you. I'm betting they laugh you out of the room."

"I've given you things to explain," Kakashi said. His voice was a lot harder then when he'd been talking to us during introductions. I ignored his killing intent. "Explain them."

"All you've done is piss me off Hatake. This is an insult to me and its an insult to the Aburame clan. Arrest me now or I'm leaving."

Hatake stared at me and I turned and started walking away, keeping track of him via my bugs in case he tried something. I was on edge.

"Mizuki was captured," Hatake said.

I kept walking. I had known Mizuki was paying more attention to me than the other sensei did, although I hadn't been sure why. There were a lot of reasons he could be doing it. He might want to try to use me to advance his own career, be selling information to someone, or just be taking his job very seriously. Considering he was the best instructor on staff as well as the least bigoted, the last one had seemed the most reasonable. In light of the threats being leveled at me, it didn't seem so reasonable now.

Hatake didn't stop me from leaving.

"Father, Kakashi Hatake just threatened to take me into T&I. Why? I don't know, but reading between the lines I think Mizuki was acting as a spy and now that he's caught he's trying to set me up to fall down with him in order to harm the leaf. I was wondering if you know what's actually going on. Why? Because this caught me by complete surprise." Aburame speaking patterns were an annoying habit. Why? Because the kids at the academy had made me feel foolish when I realized I spoke so much differently than they did. I'd fixed the problem, but defaulted to what I'd learned to do as child when back at home.

Shibi didn't react to my words except a slight narrowing of the eyes.

"You do know what's going on right?" I asked.

"A few days ago Mizuki attempted to steal a valuable jutsu scroll and arrange for the Leaf to lose the nine-tails. I know that he's suspected to have been operating as a spy within our academy for years now. Why? Because he is a prideful man and feels he has been slighted by the Leaf for lack of recognition for his service."

"Any idea who he's working for?" I asked. "Or why a jounin is putting his career on the line to attack us like this?"

Shibi frowned at my words. It was an extreme display of emotion for him. "This won't hurt Kakashi. He's an important man. There's talk about him becoming the next Hokage, when the Third steps down."

Well damn, that made this whole situation that much worse. I didn't just have a random joe suspicious of me.

One of my bugs released a portion of my chakra. It was outside, but I'd grown a lot since my initial foray into using the senses of my bugs. I didn't have to be touching my bug anymore, it just had to release some of my chakra for me to get an update. When the chakra was released, some of it returned to me on its own. So I knew everything that my bug had seen and done since it had last sipped on my chakra. It was kind of similar to the way some advanced clone techniques could be used for spying.

My bug had done a lot of things since it last ate, but the important thing was that it had just seen Kakashi Hatake entering our clan compound. "Hatake just entered the clan grounds. He's alone and walking toward our house."

"We will meet him." Shibi walked to the door and I followed. "Why? Because he must explain his actions."

I followed Shibi, but also sent out orders to my bugs. I wanted them to get in position to start alerting other Aburame in the area to come to where we were going to meet Hatake. I held off on actually giving the order, because it was the sort of political power play that could easily backfire on me and I wanted to get a sense of how things were going to play out first. There had been a minor incident where a similar move had kept me from having to join some secret elite ninja unit, years back, when one of the village's councillors had tried to pressure me into joining.

"Hello Shibi," Hatake said, his voice light.

"My daughter tells me you threatened her. I will hear your explanation. Why? As a student of the Fourth Hokage and someone I respect, I trust you had good reasons."

I hadn't known that my dad respected Hatake or that he was a student of the Fourth. I actually didn't know a lot about what was going on or Hatake in general. So I was kind of frustrated that he had shown up before I had time to learn more.

"I do have reasons. Your daughter's being monitored by Orochimaru. Extensively. He's been getting copies of every homework assignment she does, every test she completes, and a monthly summary of her development. The reports don't just focus on how she's progressing as a kunoichi. They include observations about her interpersonal relationships, her habits, and what she cares about. To give you an idea of the sort of details that are included its noted that she takes offense to bullying, that she shuns the Hyugga heiress and has the utmost respect for a member of the their branch family, and that she prefers brown rice to white." Hatake paused. "Beyond that, we can be sure that Orochimaru has at least one more person keeping track of her. How we know that is classified."

"For this reason you threatened my daughter?" Shibi asked.

"As you already know, she was assigned to my gennin team. Put yourself in my shoes. An S rank ninja, one who I doubt I could take in an even fight, is showing an interest in my charge. Mizuki didn't know why. It wasn't on your radar at all. T&I dropped it, after Anko argued that bringing her in would cause a political nightmare. So yes, I tried to provoke a reaction from the last remaining lead."

I expected my dad to throw the accusations in Hatake's face and defend me as innocent until proven guilty. He didn't. He sounded concerned. I adjusted my evaluation of Hatake a bit higher. He didn't have just a little of my dad's respect. He had a lot of it. "Do you think Orochimaru will try to take her again?"

Hatake shrugged. "I'm leaning toward him having experimented on her during the period she was kidnapped with plans to re-abduct her at a later date. Something mental going by the Yamanaka issues. Given how well she's done since then, I'd say its a certainty that he will be paying her a visit in the future. Also… she knows this and thinks we'll turn on her because of it."

My dad glanced at me, then looked back to Hatake. I was really glad I hadn't told the bugs to draw people around. This was not the sort of conversation I wanted everyone to be hearing. It was too close to the truth. Far too close.

"Tera," my dad said, looking to me. "Is what Kakashi suggesting true?"

Fuck. I fell back into Aburame speaking habits. "I've suspected Orochimaru did something. Why? Because a baby hit by a torture genjutsu is unlikely to develop into a prodigy…"

"You should have shared this concern with me. Why? Because you are not alone in having been experimented on by Orochimaru. You would not have been shunned, but shielded."

Right. Except the people that were shielded were still the people they were before. Shibi's daughter never even had the chance to become her own person; arguably, I'd killed her, but I didn't like to think of it in those terms. "I didn't think you would be so reasonable about it."

Shibi frowned again and then looked back to Hatake. "I'll expect you to look after my daughter. Why? Because as her sensei it is your duty. Thank you for sharing your suspicions."

Hatake crinkled his eyes and I couldn't see his smirk behind his stupid face-mask. "Just doing my job Shibi and don't worry too much, neh? It's not the first time I've had a student that Orochimaru was experimenting on, after all. I'll keep her safe. Maybe even figure out what he did to her."

He reached out and messed with my hair.

When I got home, my dad gave me a lecture on showing respect to Kakashi Hatake, the most likely candidate for the next Hokage after Jiraya of the sannin.

That night I learned a good bit about… Kakashi. Kakashi Hatake, son of Sakumo Hatake a man who often compared in strength to the sannin and who was infamous for triggering the Second Shinobi World War when he abandoned a mission to save the lives of his teammates. Even if I ignored his lineage, Hatake had an amazing resume. He held the record for the earliest graduation from the Konoha academy and for the earliest promotion to chunnin. He was a jounin by the time he was my age. His sensei had been the Fourth Hokage. He'd headed ANBU at one point. Basically, he wasn't just some random jounin.

He was the sort of ninja that was bad ass enough that he didn't just get a nickname, but he got multiple. Some places called him Kakashi of the Sharingan. Others called him the Copy Ninja. Still others named him for a particular jutsu he used to great effect, because they'd been unaware it had only been one of the many in his arsenal and so they had sold him short even while giving him a unique to name emphasize how dangerous he was. Though, there mistake about him wasn't really that absurd. He was capable of doing jutsu of every single basic elemental nature. The only other person I knew who could do that was the Third Hokage.

At four thirty AM the next morning, I woke up. Today, one of the village's elite jounin was going to be testing me.


	11. Chapter 11

Kakashi was supposed to have arrived five minutes ago and all I could think was, _eight hours is too long until lunch._

Since the moment I'd understood that I was being groomed to join what amounted to a parahuman mercenary organization, I had been looking forward to the part of the training where I would actually get to start working as a kunoichi. Now that it had finally arrived, I had to listen to Naruto complain about how hungry he was.

"Do you think he'll bring some food with him?" Naruto asked, for the third time in the last five minutes.

"It's going to be a survival exercise, right?" I asked.

Naruto nodded. "And if we don't pass he's going to send us back to the academy!" Naruto snickered. "Hey aren't you supposed to be the one who pays attention. Why are you asking me this stuff?"

I ignored his question. "Well if it's a survival exercise and we're not supposed to eat, I really doubt he'll just be giving us food."

I glanced around. The clearing was empty except for us and covered in shadow. It was still early enough that the sun wasn't out. I'd figured we would be active so I hadn't dressed heavy despite how early I headed out. I was starting to regret that. There were holes in my body. The cold went more then skin deep.

I gave Kakashi an hour. Then I left for home. This time I didn't manage to convince the boys to do the same. They remembered that Kakashi had shown up and called us trash only a few minutes after when I'd call it quits and they didn't want a repeat.

Being a gennin had perks. One of the biggest ones was I got access to more information than before. You didn't just get to go browsing the family jutsu library or reading up on fuinjutsu theory as an academy student. That started changing when you became a gennin and ever further promotions beyond that would mean even more things I would be trusted with.

I was willing to bet that those sort of restrictions wouldn't have made sense to someone raised on Earth Aleph. People there had put a lot of stock in ideas like freedom of information. As someone from Earth Bet, I knew how dangerous powers could be. So it wasn't as much of a leap for me. Powers were weapons, weapons even more dangerous than guns. Therefore, their distribution was tightly controlled much like a gun was. And just like a hand gun was treated differently than a SMG which in turn was treated differently than a Tinker-tech laser cannon, some jutsu were treated more carefully than others. You couldn't just casually go out and purchase a missile on Earth Aleph and you couldn't casually purchase the jutsu equivalent here.

So yeah. Being a gennin had perks. Now I could arm myself legally, so I was doing it.

Fuinjutsu was bullshit, as ninja powers went. It was a strong Tinker power. Not something crazy like Tinker 12, but maybe Tinker 9. You could use it to resurrect the dead, make bombs, make a clone of yourself in a dead body that you could control from a distance, make someone loyal to you, restrict what they could say or do, contain an Endbringer… When it came to what people had pulled off with fuinjutsu it sometimes felt like the limitation was whether someone had thought of it rather than whether it was possible.

As a result, it was one of the powers that was most tightly controlled. Sure, plenty of people knew how to make basic seals like explosive tags or sealing scrolls, but most people were never allowed to go much beyond that especially outside times of war.

The thing was, it was a Tinker power. So… you didn't need to rely on an education from someone else, not entirely at least.

I read through the introductory sealing materials, letting my mind move away from the scrolls and follow the flashes of inspirations that my Tinker power was giving me rather than paying attention to what I was reading. I jotted down notes as I read through the basic sealing scroll and the theory behind how it worked, but I didn't take notes about the scroll itself. Instead, I took notes when I got a flash of inspiration on how to adapt it to allow my bugs to store chakra within the seal. Explosive seals weren't gennin approved material. So an hour later, when I got another flash of inspiration, it was while I was reading about a barrier seal. The Tinker aspect of my powerset was suggesting an alteration to the barrier so that it would be ridded with small holes. In both cases, the inspiration didn't have everything I would need. I was still new to fuinjutsu and not everything about how it functioned was exactly alike to how I knew Tinker powers to operate. I wasn't sure why the ideas refused to fully manifest into something that I thought was going to work.

That was fine though. I was a fucking Tinker. I didn't know what the focus of the seals I would be able to come up with on my own was going to turn out to be, but did it matter? I'd never met a Tinker who wasn't infuriating. Even the idiot Leet had made a teleporter and a device that could duplicate the way I had controlled bugs.

Hours passed and I actually had a snack before my scouts announced Kakashi's arrival. A pretty big part of me wanted to keep reading the fuinjutsu scroll, but I tore myself away from it when he knocked.

I opened the door. "Hi Kakashi. Mind explaining why you didn't show up?" I asked.

"I think that was my line, but sure. I'll explain while we walk. Come along." He started walking back toward the training ground.

I waited for him to explain as we walked, but he wasn't saying anything. "So, what's up? This is the second time you weren't there when you should have been."

"I'll answer with a question of my own. Have you heard of the saying, a ninja must see past deception?"

"I have," I said. I thought about what he was saying. "So what, you're just lying to us teach us not to be deceived? That… doesn't seem like a great way to teach."

"It's more like… I think Naruto would be better off getting used to the idea that the person giving him orders _could_ be lying to him. I want him to think a lot more critically. Tell me, how much do you know about what happened with Naruto and Mizuki?"

"I know Mizuki tried to kill him," I said.

"Then you don't know much. I'll fill in some of the details for you. Mizuki told Naruto that if he stole a scroll filled with forbidden jutsu, he would be allowed to pass the gennin exam. Against all odds, Naruto managed to learn one of the techniques while Mizuki was busy ensuring Naruto wasn't caught. Long story short, Naruto fought off Mizuki using the jutsu, so Mizuki never managed to reach the point where Naruto was dead and Mizuki was free to copy parts of the scroll before returning it to the village."

Wow. Naruto had been Mizuki's patsy? Actually, the fact that Naruto apparently had a forbidden technique was much more interesting. Regardless, the explanation went a long way to explaining why Kakashi had told us to show up at the wrong time. "So you're going to keep lying to Naruto until he stops trusting you?"

Kakashi crinkled his eye at me. "Now you're getting it. But can you tell me why I'm bothering to tell you this?"

"You probably want me to think you're competent." Which, was kind of sad really. I was thirteen and Kakashi was a grown man. It was weird to think that he was overly concerned with having my respect. I certainly didn't feel on overriding need to impress Naruto or Sasuke. To get along with them? Maybe. But to impress them? No. They were just little kids playing at being capes.

"Wrong. I don't want you to tell Naruto when I'm lying. Then he could just use you as a crutch. I want him to think it through on his own. He needs to figure it out for himself."

"Alright. I'll play along," I said. There were probably better ways to teach Naruto to think critically, but it wasn't like Kakashi wanted my respect. So it wasn't much of a surprise that he wasn't looking for them. Maybe I was being too harsh, but I'd never really gotten along with teachers and Kakashi was leaning a lot closer toward enemy than teacher, what with outing the fact that Orochimaru had done something to me.

"Excellent. Now when Naruto asks why we're late… lets see… it was a black cat and we had to take the long way. Got it?"

Naruto literally growled when Kakashi gave his excuse, his fists clenched. He wasn't alone in being angry though. Both boys were angry. I didn't need to ask why. There was only one set of small footprints that led into the clearing that actually turned and went back out. My own. The two boys had stayed here for the last few hours. Not only that, but they hated each other and they'd stayed within ten feet of each other.

I was glad that I was older and had a sense of perspective. I didn't feel any sort of pressure about the test. If I didn't pass? I would go back to the academy. If I did pass, even better. Even if I failed out entirely, it was only school. I was familiar with being a drop out. It wasn't the end of the world. That had come later.

Naruto and Sasuke wanted to be ninja and they wanted it now. Even though it was absurd to think waiting multiple hours for their sensei to show up was reasonable, they did it anyway.

Kakashi took an alarm clock and two bells from his green backpack. He set the alarm atop a wooden training post.

"Lets see…" He hit the alarm clock, and it made a ticking noise. "Its set for noon."

Then he turned to us and held the two bells out in from them by their strings. "Your assignment is very simple. You just have to take these bells from me. That's all there is to it." He raised the bells then dropped them a little, making them jingle. "If you can't get them by noon, you go without lunch. Instead of eating, you'll be tied to those posts and you'll watch while I eat my lunch in front of you."

Alright. Well assuming he wasn't bullshitting again, then I definitely wanted one of the bells. Skipping lunch wasn't something I wanted to do. I was inclined to believe him though. It seemed like a pretty kid friendly punishment and it explained why he hadn't wanted us to eat. The idea that we would be puking from our training was where the lie had come in.

He waited for questions, but no one had any. Why would we? The test was dead simple. Take bells; get food. The silence started to stretch out.

"Do we just start at any time or…" I mean, it would be poor form to just attack him without warning right?

"I was waiting for one of you to point out that are only two bells."

The timer was already going down. "Okay. Two bells. Four people. Why?"

"There are three of you," Kakashi said. So apparently he didn't play a part in whatever twist he was adding to his _very simple_ 'survival exercise'. "That means that ultimately one of your is going to be tied up and ultimately disqualified for failing to complete the mission. That one goes back to the academy. Then again, all three of you could flunk out too. You can use any weapons and shuriken. If you're not prepared to kill me, you won't be able to take the bells."

Did he have a third student already? An apprentice? That kind of sucked for the boys, especially Naruto. Then again, he could just be trying to turn us against each other. On the other hand, we were allowed to use weapons. So that was a thing. "What about jutsu and bugs?" I asked.

"Go all out," Kakashi said. "Come at me with the intent to kill, as if I was actually an enemy. It's your only chance."

I was rather certain that would be a bad idea. People had a habit of underestimating me to their detriment and it would look really bad if I killed the first person to suggest that I might be involved with Orochimaru the day after he announced his suspicions. "You sure you want to train like that? I know you're good, but I just don't want something to go wrong because you underestimated us. You haven't worked with us before."

"Yeah. No offense sensei, but you're kind of a one eyed old man," Naruto chipped in. He intended offense, obviously. He was grinning, waiting for the reaction.

"Class clowns are are usually the weakest links. You can safely ignore them." Kakashi was looking at me, not Naruto. "Lowest scores. Losers."

Naruto stopped grinning and scowled.

"When I say start you can begin-"

A kunai fell into Naruto's hand and he twirled it around his finger twice, and then caught it in the palm of his hand. Then he charged, full speed, not holding back anything.

Kakashi darted forward his arm reaching for Naruto's. He caught Naruto's arm, but I had ordered the bugs that I had ordered to hide under Naruto's jacket to spill out and attack Kakashi. So Kakashi threw himself away from Naruto instead of committing to his attack. At the same time, I threw a kunai just behind Kakashi, which he caught by the handle and returned at me at twice the speed.

My bugs slammed into the side and it was deflected past me.

The initial exchange had been fast. Naruto had lost sight of Kakashi and then stumbled. I wasn't even sure if he had seen Kakashi move. Sasuke reacted better. The moment my bugs had appeared, he took off for the tree line.

Some of my trump bugs broke away to follow after him. Partially to help defend him from our sensei, but also to eat the traces of chakra he left behind while hiding. With any luck, that would help him to get hidden. Running and hiding as an effective tactic might seem stupid, but capes in this world all had Stranger and Mover ratings. So if you didn't see someone and the attacked you? You could be taken down before you realized what had happened.

"Start," Kakashi called, making things a little more official.

Bugs spilled out of me in droves. Kakashi wasn't attacking, yet. So I ordered a contingent of bugs to start encircling him from a distance, setting things up for a more direct attack later.

"First lesson, ninjutsu," Kakashi said. His hands tore through the start of a water jutsu and my bugs were already moving at my command as he completed it. "Water Bullet jutsu."

Naruto charged toward Kakashi again, still angry at the insult. Sasuke was at the tree line, watching the battle. He was well hidden. I couldn't see him through my own eyes and only knew where he was because of the reports from my insects.

Kakashi wasn't aiming at either of them with his jutsu. He was aiming at me. I didn't bother moving and as Kakashi completed the jutsu, he noticed that. He looked horrified and burst toward me, chasing behind the jutsu. I think he was trying to beat it to me, to pull me out of the way of the attack.

He shouldn't have bothered. A stream of trump bugs moved to intercept it. Even as they did that, another set of bugs moved to obscure my motion as palmed a kunai and threw it toward Kakashi.

Kakashi redirected his course, heading for the charging Naruto. His water jutsu splashed to the ground, the chakra powering taken as my own, and the kunai I had thrown streaked through the air.

He was faster then me. There was no way I was going to be able to take him in taijutsu.

Naruto, still charging toward Kakashi, had brought up his hands to start a jutsu, but I knew he wasn't fast enough to get it off before Kakashi reached him. So I warded away Kakashi with the same bugs that had swept towards him the first time he'd tried to go for Naruto.

He moved away from him and glanced at me. His eye narrowed.

Naruto finished his jutsu. Some sort of clone technique, like my bug clones. There were seven of him now and all of them started charging towards Kakashi.

For my part, I backed away. A haze of bugs separated me from Kakashi, but I didn't want to be too close. They weren't just in front of me either. Standard operating procedure for Aburame was to box in their opponents. I was inverting that operating procedure. Instead of just trying to get my bugs on Kakashi by surrounding him, I was making it impossible for him to get to me by surrounding myself too.

As Naruto closed the distance, I ordered some of my bugs to shrink the circle that had formed around Kakashi. From every direction at once, including above, some of my bugs were flying toward my sensei.

"Next lesson, ninja tools," Kakashi said. He crinkled his eyes and dropped a pellet. Rapidly, a cloud of gas formed around him. It was thick and white and completely obscured him. I had my bugs pull back, but sent a few to check the gas. It was poisonous.

Naruto's clones were charging towards the smoke. So was the real Naruto. At my order, bugs swept in front of him. They formed pictures and words. A giant X; poison.

"Ew! Bugs!" Naruto cried.

Another Naruto looked toward me. "Hey what gives! We're on your side Tera!"

"Yeah!" Another Naruto this time. "What he said! Why are you helping him to run away?"

I didn't take my focus off the gas. My kikachu circled, waiting for Kakashi to leave it. I didn't move a lot of them too close though. Letting himself get surrounded felt like a feint to me. The bait was too obvious; eventually the gas was going to clear and I figured he was setting me up to lose a large number of bugs with some sort of area effect jutsu.

Idly, I threw a brace of kunai into the gas. Half at roughly neck level. The other half aimed lower, in case he had ducked down. It would really suck if I killed him, but he had a Brute rating. He could probably handle it.

Then I formed a bunshin, filled it with bugs, and then took off into the forest. I hid in the tree above Sasuke; mindful of Kakashi's sensory abilities, I removed my headband and passed it off to my bugs. They carried it away from and I hoped it would confuse his ability to track me by scent.

It was hard to get across just how fast ninja moved. By the time the kunai finished sailing through the poison gas, I was already in the tree and able to watch as the kunai exited the other side of the smoke. There was no blood.

Slowly, the smoke cleared. Enough of it was gone that I could see that Kakashi had managed to slip away.

Sasuke and I were hidden away in the forest. Me at the top of a tree. Sasuke directly beneath me. Naruto and his seven clones were backing away from my bugs; it wasn't really worth my attention, but he'd tried to get around them to enter the poisonous gas and when I'd started menacing him with the bugs he'd gotten scared and started backing away. That was annoying too, because I wanted to get some of the bugs back under his clothes and now he was on guard for it.

My own bug clone was pretending to look around, still in the middle of the clearing. It looked up, checking the sky. At the same moment it looked up, the ground beneath the bug clone broke away; Kakashi's arm shot out and dragged the clone down beneath the earth. My bug clone broke apart and the bugs that had made it up began sucking the chakra from the Kakashi's arm.

One of my bugs released my chakra giving me an update. Another Kakashi was coming up out of the ground a few feet behind Sasuke. My bugs moved again. The ones that had been tailing Sasuke pushing out behind him in a warding net. Sasuke couldn't see that though. He didn't know Kakashi was there.

Another set of bugs moved in front of him forming words. Behind you.

The earth clone that Kakashi had attacked my bug clone with was destroyed, the chakra powering it drained away, but it hadn't broken apart yet. It took a little for the technique to finish failing. So some of the bugs attacking it broke away and spelled out that it was a clone.

Every split-second advantage I could give was one that helped close the gap between our Mover ratings and the higher Mover rating of our sensei.

I was hoping to turn this fight into one where I could outlast Kakashi. He was known as a jutsu user and I could use my bugs to no-sell most jutsu. Worse, every time he used chakra on a technique that my bugs dealt with, that was chakra that I gained.

I threw a brace of shuriken, not aiming directly at him, but aiming all around him. Sasuke spun around to face Kakashi. In the time it took for Sasuke to turn, Kakashi released two shuriken and completed a henge, transforming into me. He didn't throw the shuriken as fast as the one's he had thrown at me. He wasn't trying to kill Sasuke.

That wasn't smart of him; I blocked the shuriken for Sasuke with my bugs. That left Sasuke with a free action. Sasuke managed to get out his own shuriken and at the last possible moment before Sasuke threw he noticed that and adjusted him aim- he threw not to deflect the incoming projectiles, but directly at the Kakashi that was pretending to be me.

They punched through the henged-Tera-Kakashi's neck. Sasuke's eyes went wide, horrified, as illusory blood spurted out.

I sent an order to my own bugs to spell out that the henge was just that. Then I got a status update from a scouting bug that was across the clearing. Kakashi had substituted himself and was now moving away from us.

Explosive tags were off-limits. I didn't know how to make them and wasn't allowed to learn. Sealing scrolls weren't. I activated the sealing scroll beside Kakashi and kunai shot out at him. At the same time, I had my bugs set off two ninja wire log traps that someone had set up. I'm guessing it was Sasuke, because I hadn't done it.

Logs swung down out of the trees. Kakashi's eye widened as he saw the incoming kunai. He threw himself out of the way and into the path of the log, but he ducked under it. Then he started throwing senbon through my bugs.

He had figured out that I was watching him through the eyes of my scouts and he was taking them out to deny me information. I ordered my bugs to get more evasive.

While fighting with Kakashi via my bugs, I had also made an arrow to point Sasuke towards where the fight was on-going. He understood right away and was already running in the direction my arrow was pointing. The henge hadn't even faded yet on the Tera-henged-substitution log. Sasuke was competent.

"Come on Naruto," I yelled. Naruto wasn't treating my bugs as things to listen to. He was treating them like things to run from. So I couldn't pass things along the fast and silent way.

Shit. Sasuke was running ahead and Naruto wasn't catching on to the fact that the fight was moving. I made another bug clone and sent it chasing after Sasuke. Then, just to be confusing, I made yet another bunshin and left in the tree. With my actual body, I ran down the side of tree into the clearing to the horde of Naruto's.

"Sensei's this way," I said, pointing. "Come on. If you can, try to surround him. Okay?"

"We're going to kick sensei's ass," one of the Naruto's told me.

"Yeah!" Another agreed.

"Believe it!"

"Just keep those bugs off and we got this!"

I started jogging off after Sasuke, Naruto and his personal army in tow. Unfortunately, Kakashi had gotten far enough away and killed enough of my bugs that my scouting bugs had lost sight of him.

He was good and I was starting to suspect I wasn't going to manage to get a bell. Being able to take on my cousins, even though they were chunnin, didn't mean that I was able to take on Kakashi. I was used to that though. In my last life, people said I hit above my weight class and no one had claimed that I was actually as strong as someone like Eidolon or Alexandria, regardless of what I had managed. Kind of strange that: you actually kill someone, but the versus thread still claim you would lose to them.

Kakashi melted out of a tree beside Sasuke. "Third lesson, genjutsu," he said, his hand snaking out to tap Sasuke's head.

Sasuke stumbled and then fell. A moment later the bugs I had hidden on him were sucking away the foreign chakra. He rolled away from Kakashi. My bug clone charged him and he punched it, causing it to explode, but he was still too fast for me to actually catch with my bugs. He flitted out of range of them again and they gave chase.

I needed to switch things up. I ordered my kikachu to start grabbing strands of ninja wire. The beetles were strong enough that two working together could carry the wire at a pretty high speed.

Three dozen pairs of kikachu peeled off to start grabbing wires. They carried them full speed, chasing after Kakashi while splitting out to try to come at him from multiple directions.

I angled them to cut him off up ahead rather than chasing directly; he was trying to move the fight further and further from Naruto. More importantly, although there wasn't a limit to how far my scouts could go before I was able to get back reports from them, anything over about three hundred meters was too far for me to give them new orders.

"Where is he?" Naruto asked me.

I pointed. Kakashi dropped another smoke pellet and then followed it up with a wind jutsu. It blew through the bugs from my bug clone, killing them and then hanging in the air rather than dispersing. I sent more bugs to start harvesting the residual from the chakra from the attack, at the edges of the poison.

The bugs holding ninja wire had cut off retreat for Kakashi. Not really. I was sure he could blow through them without a sweat. Still, at least I had done tried to cut off the retreat.

Naruto took off running. He'd made it ten steps when a dog, one I had thought was wild, tore into his clones. In only a second there was only one Naruto, the real one. It was like the clones were made of paper. I put myself between the dog and Naruto, kunai in my hand and tensed. Meanwhile, I ordered bugs to circle around and come at the dog from behind. Other bugs began collecting the residual chakra left behind when Naruto's clones were dispersed.

The dog growled at me. Bugs moved, attacking it from behind, and in the moment it spun to deal with the new threat, I threw a kunai. Finally. Finally a thrown kunai actually mattered. It pierced through the dog's skull and the creature disappeared in a puff of chakra. It was one of Kakashi's projections.

In the period I'd been distracted with Naruto, Kakashi had moved for Sasuke.

Sasuke, seeing him coming, had responded with a fire jutsu. While obscured from Sasuke's vision by the fire jutsu, Kakashi summoned a clone. One of the Kakashi's charged around the fire. He circled around Sasuke fast, a blur to Sasuke's eyes. The other waited until the last possible moment and then leaped over the approaching fireball, arching into the air.

The two Kakashi's struck at the same time. The one in the air using a wind jutsu, sending a wall of hard air hurtling toward Sasuke. The one one the ground charged for Sasuke. Sasuke didn't see the wind jutsu coming and he was already falling into a taijutsu stance. So I moved the majority of my bugs to intercept the wall of air.

Credit where credit is due, Sasuke was good at taijutsu. Even when not nearly as fast, he pulled off an acrobatic exchange that left him with his hands clasped around the bell at the end of it, just through virtue of making use of every single limb while Kakashi blocked his attacks.

Then the lightning clone, because of course Kakashi was still one step ahead of me, dissolved and Sasuke fell with a shriek. Fuck. I'd actually thought that was the real Kakashi. I sent in more bugs to start collecting the leftover chakra. "Sasuke's down. Just us two now."

"You killed the dog," Naruto said, his voice slightly raised. "I thought you said you liked dogs?"

"Kakashi's going to be coming for us. How much chakra do you have left?" I asked. I needed him focused on the fight. "Can you do the clone jutsu still?" Naruto was staring at where the dog used to be, not listening to me, but he turned to me. "Can you do the clone jutsu again?" I asked again.

"Uh, yeah," Naruto said. "How many do you want?"

"As many as you can. Don't worry about the chakra. Kakashi's been using a lot of jutsu. My bugs will be able to fill you back up if they land on you."

Naruto nodded. Then he made over five hundred clones. You know. Just like, casually filling the forest. Seriously though. What the actual fuck. The entire forest around me was filled.

I stared at him, uncomprehending. My mind couldn't quite wrap my head around just how much chakra he has used. I'd known he had a lot of chakra, but when I thought of it was more in terms of like a bathtub to my cup. The first clones to be killed by the dog were still having the residual chakra eaten and even if it was _only_ that much chakra per clone, when obviously there was much more, Naruto had at least a thousand times more chakra I did.

Had he used _all_ of his chakra just then? I didn't see bijju chakra? Shit, was he going to collapse from chakra exhaustion? That could be fatal.

Belatedly, I realized we still had to get the bells. "Okay. Uh… that's a lot of clones." He was like Spree, but just normally dumb rather than only getting retarded when he started cloning himself. Not the time. Needed to focus. Okay. "I'm going to put my bugs in front of you and guide you towards Kakashi. Lets not get fancy. Just try to overwhelm him by making him have to deal with more attacks at once then even a jounin can handle. I'll try to get my insects to get the bells while he's distracted dealing with you."

Naruto nodded. There were five hundred of them. They all nodded. A forest of orange-wearing blondes nodded at me. Right. Focus, Weaver.

I struggled to keep up with it all. I'd been working on ways to split my attention between multiple bugs. I knew it was possible to have concurrently running attention and multi-tasking ability through merely chakra based means because of the legend of Sasori of the Hundred Puppets, but I just wasn't that good yet.

I improvised. Ten controlled swarms. Fifty smaller sets which went to those swarms to get orders. All my focus went into managing it.

Naruto started heading out chasing after Kakashi and I caught his arm. "Wait. Stay here. I'm going to be having my bugs fill you back up. You've done enough already."

"What? But I want to beat that bastard up. He called me an idiot! Can you believe that guy? Who does he think he is!"

The other Naruto's were starting to stampede. "Charge!"

"Get him! We're coming for you Kakashi-sensei!"

Some were giving whoops of delight. There were some that tripped and dispelled themselves. It didn't even matter. There were just so many.

"Still think you can just ignore me sensei!"

I wished he would shut up. Okay. Uh… that swarm go toward where the clones fell. There was too much going on. Too much to process. That set of bugs to the clone that burst. Then… okay those ones need to come back over to Naruto and start giving him chakra. No, chase him down. Doesn't matter that he's afraid. He just used way too much chakra. Don't want to risk chakra exhaustion.

Naruto batted at the bugs circling him. "Stop freaking out Naruto!" I ordered, annoyed as he killed some of my bugs.

He covered his ears and ducked his head. Then he threw himself onto the ground and curled into a ball, shoving his face into his shirt. Acting out again for attention again? Not the time.

Okay. Direct the first squadron of Naruto clones around behind Kakashi. The next from the front. This one around the side. Direct the other one to start climbing up the trees. Then yet another to start setting up traps.

We could do this.

Kakashi was in another clearing staring out at the trees, his one eye wide as a literal army of Naruto's began rushing at him from every side. Others had, not at my suggestion, because damn was it stupid- worked together to literally throw some Naruto's into the air like missiles so that their were Naruto's falling from the sky too, from every direction at once.

Holy shit. This was actually happening.

 _A/N: Taylor's defensive fighting is a cross between Kisame's use of Samehada to no-sell the use of jutsu and Gaara's defensive sand warding. She also uses her bugs to see everything that is happening. I'm hoping that I can use that to write fight scenes that have the usual ninja tricks, but allow everyone to get to see those tricks happening. Maybe I'm not a good enough writer to do it though. Guess we'll find out. Offensively, she just keeps trying a bunch of different things. Try to surround them and drain chakra? Didn't work. Okay try flying ninja wire through the position. Didn't work? Okay try something else. Kind of like how in her fight against Sere stuff doesn't work, so she continues trying different things until she finds something that does. Long-term, she wins the efficiency game because she's a chakra leech, so she doesn't commit to head on attacks. Things obviously get a whole lot trickier for her if someone can ignore the tactical advantages of her bugs._

 _A/N: Feel free to give me suggestions on way to make the fight scenes flow more smoothly. I think I'm pretty terrible at writing them._


	12. Chapter 12

The orange swarm fell upon Kakashi Hatake, guided by my will. The clones that made it up were simple creatures, much like my trump bugs, but what they lacked in intelligence they made up for in mass, my omnipresent instructions, and their own exuberance. Then Kakashi henged into Naruto and things changed. The orange swarm started attacking itself. It was guided by Naruto's will now; all him, not me - wow, but I really wasn't looking forward to having him on my team.

"Get him!" One of the Narutos yelled.

"Hey not me," another Naruto whined.

"I think that's him!"

"No! _Your_ the one's who Kakashi!"

It was chaos, a cacophony of voices and senseless clone on clone violence. The Naruto-clones were attacking each other. Destroying each other. There were so many clones being dispelled that the entire area was being covered in a haze of white chakra smoke.

It would have been easy to laugh at, since Naruto had a habit of trying to be an entertaining idiot, except something was _wrong_. Whatever it was, it was contagious. Not all the clones were acting stupid. Some of them were following the orders of my bugs, still set on going after the henged-Naruto-Kakashi. Those Narutos were serious. Intent on their task. Determined. One by one though, that was changing. They would be chasing after Kakashi through the forest only to stop, scowl and then turn back toward the massive brawl, wading in to avenge the death of one of their fellow Naruto clones.

"Naruto," I said. "Kakashi's coming this way, he's not pretending to be you anymore. I need you to let your clones know so they can come help us."

Naruto was partially buried in insects. I ordered them away. Reaching down I pulled Naruto's arm away from his head. "Naruto the bugs aren't on you anymore. You should be good on chakra now, but don't do another jutsu like the one you did a minute ago, okay? And let your clones know Kakashi isn't hanged anymore."

I _got_ that Naruto was probably going to be fine. He had a lot chakra. To get a sense for my perspective on the issue though: Naruto's clones were behaving erratically only a little while after Naruto took an action which would have instantly killed me if I'd tried it. _Something_ was _wrong_ and I didn't want him to accidentally make it worse.

Naruto looked up at me, eyes wide. Before, when he'd looked at my bugs, I'd gotten the impression he was goofing around about being freaked out. He was the class clown. That impression had been right. After I'd helped him with the dog, Naruto had dropped the act. His clones had followed my bugs without a problem. Now though? He looked genuinely frightened.

I reviewed mentally what had just happened… I'd buried Naruto in insects to restore his chakra. Shit. It was so easy for me to lose sight of just how scary insects could be. For some people, just having one crawl on the was enough to make them flip out. It had always been a problem for me, even in my last life, but unlike before, I actually lived with people who weren't freaked out by my insects now. So I didn't even have that fear of insects as part of my culture.

I'd fucked up.

Kakashi walked into the clearing. He wasn't henged like Naruto anymore. I put a screen of bugs between Kakashi and I, but he didn't attack. He was watching us. There was an unspoken agreement to allow Naruto to recover before the test continued.

"You okay Naruto?" I asked.

"Yeah," Naruto lied. I stuck out my hand and he grabbed it. I hauled him to his feet.

"Did I miss something?" Kakashi asked.

"I think Naruto's done for now. It's just you and me."

Naruto surprised me. One moment he was shell shocked. Then suddenly he was scowling. "Hey!" He pointed at Kakashi. "There you are! I've been looking for you, but if you're here…" Naruto dismissed his clones. It wasn't a good call. His clones dying was messing with his head. Moreover, it was a lot of chakra wasted. Apparently Naruto didn't see it that way. "Ha! You thought you could trick me into attacking myself, but I'm one step ahead of you sensei."

Kakashi raised his only visible eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yeah! I stayed back so that the clones wouldn't be able to attack the real me when you made your move."

Naruto wasn't distraught anymore and something passed between Kakashi and I, another unspoken signal. The fight was back on.

Kakashi made two clones that ran into the forest and then raised his headband just before my swarm blanketed him. I caught a flash of red; his famous sharingan eye. Then he lowered the headband back over his eye. It was an almost casual action.

My bugs started draining chakra. It would have been nice to send bugs crawling up his nose and down his mouth too, but he was wearing a face mask. I could have ordered the bugs to start tunneling into his eyes, but I felt that was a step too far. I also could have sent bugs into his ears and had them burst his ear drums. I didn't though. Even though he'd told me to go for the kill, at the end of the day this was just a training session.

He was done for anyway. Well I had a lot of bugs draining his chakra at the very least. He should be falling over… already. He wasn't though. I was starting to get a little concerned.

"Do you know why they call me the Copy Ninja, Tera?" Kakashi asked.

Naruto answered before I did. "Oh I know," he said. "It's cause you like to use henge right? Are you going to be a girl next, pretend to be Tera like you pretended to be me. Heh, I bet I can do that better."

That… was really weird. I didn't want to think about what teenage boys with access to clones and transformation techniques were getting up to. So I ignored Naruto. The real reason Kakashi was called the Copy Ninja was that he copied… oh shit. The insects that should have been draining Kakashi of his chakra began to start flying away from him, towards me.

Kakashi hurled a kunai at Naruto. It was the slowest throw yet. I snagged it from the air and hurled it back at him at twice the speed. A disorienting feeling of deja vu came over me as he used my insects to deflect it past him.

Controlling trump bugs wasn't a bloodline, it was a secret technique. Somehow, Kakashi had managed to copy it. Now he was using my own tricks against me. I had a lot of trump bugs, but the large swarm that had been on Kakashi was his now. I'd lost a lot, but only the ones that had landed on him had rebelled against me.

I still had plenty more.

I sent the order to the ones still heading toward him to abort that attack and ordered the bugs that had been holding ninja wire to start coming in at full speed. Again, just to cut off his movement. I didn't want to actually slice him in half.

Then I ordered others to start collecting the various kunai and shruinken that had been thrown around over the course of the fight with the idea that they would fly above Kakashi later and start dropping the blades down on top of him.

With any luck, I'd be able to arrange a situation where I could grab the bell. First get him distracted with the falling weapons, then follow it up with wrapping him in the ninja wire, and finally predict his substituion and nab the bells the moment he appeared.

Another group of my bugs got instructions on taking out the rogue agents in the swarm. Basically, I assigned some bugs the task of killing Kakashi's bugs.

"Next lesson, Taijutsu." The two swarms met between us and Kakashi rushed towards me.

Oh fuck no. I was _not_ trying to take a jounin in taijutsu. I was a girl, he was a guy. I was gennin, he was a jounin. I was a kid, he was an adult. Taijutsu was a singularly terrible idea. I ran away, hoping to buy time until the bugs carrying weapons could arrive, but he caught me rapidly. He was fast. So fast Naruto didn't even see him move and so fast that I couldn't keep up physically, especially when I didn't have my swarm to ward him away and act like additional limbs. I didn't want my bugs to touch him again. Not when he had copied the techniques needed to control them.

I barely deflected the first punch past me and he noticed that and slowed down enough that I managed to step away from the next; he was taking it easy on me. Then I substituted away and his kick shattered the ribs of the Tera-henged log I'd replaced with. I regretted that, because it served to stun Naruto, who had been moving to assist me, into inaction.

I didn't have time to worry about that though.

One of his clones showed up a moment later at my position. Moreover, I was pretty sure it was already over for me even if, even if I managed to deal with the clone, because when Kakashi had rushed me he'd used his own body to move part of the swarm to me and when I'd blocked his punch, those bugs had gotten onto me and started draining chakra.

That was going to end up taking me out of the fight if I couldn't deal with it, but dealing with it was very difficult. Kakashi was a thousands times better with my bugs then he'd had any right to be. They'd went into one of the tunnels on my body then barricaded the entrance and the other tunnels leading to the one they were in, so I couldn't brush them away and I couldn't have my other bugs take them out in mass because of the narrowness of the already blocked tunnel-corridors.

I gave myself maybe twenty seconds before they sucked away enough chakra to compromise me. But I couldn't focus on that. The clone was already on top of me.

I blocked the clone's punch, but in my distraction trying to think of some way to deal with the bugs draining me, I was a complete idiot about it- I didn't use chakra to anchor myself to the ground. So the force of the blow sent me flying back through the air. I couldn't reach the ground after that, so I had the bugs on my clothing latch on to my clothing and then fly down at top speed. I jerked closer to the ground, my momentum shifting. That was close enough, so still flying through the air, I leaned backwards and slapped my hand against the grass, latching on with chakra.

The contact shifting me into a somersault, but I still had a lot of momentum, so I dropped the chakra from my hand and grabbed onto the ground with chakra in my feet, going from a somersault into a forward facing slide. Then I spun around still sliding and got punched in the face by Kakashi's clone- I'd tried to block it, but he'd been faster than I could handle. A moment later my feet were swept out from under me.

I had one horrified moment to realize I was about to slam head first into the back of a tree. Then Kakashi's clone caught my foot and I jarred to a stop. Casually, he hurled me back into the clearing, into a swarm of kikachu that he captured. I was out of chakra before I touched the ground and tumbled in a boneless roll across the grass.

The last thing I noticed before my vision went black was an update from my bugs; the real Kakashi had snuck behind Naruto and was starting the first seal of a fire jutsu at point blank range; he was going to kill him.

* * *

I wasn't sure how much time had passed when I came back too. The rogue bugs had been killed. The bugs that had been ordered to carry ninja wire were dead. So were the bugs that had been tasked with dropping weapons on Kakashi from above. I'd actually lost a disgusting amount of my swarm. Nearly forty percent. The bugs that had been bringing me back chakra were still doing it though, so my reserves were back to levels where I could move.

I pushed myself to my feet. My side hurt and was going to be bruised. I could smell blood too. Kakashi's punch had split my lip.

Back with Naruto, my bugs showed Kakashi literally closing his own eye and putting his hand's over his ears. Naruto charged at him. "You left yourself open Kakashi-sensei," he crowed. Then Naruto stepped on a hidden rope trap that hauled him into the air.

Naruto flailed about. I knew he could haul himself up well enough to grab the rope and given that he had kunai it wouldn't be hard to just cut himself down. He flailed anyway.

Kakashi opened his eye and removed his hand's from his ears. "When the bait is obvious," Kakashi drawled. " _Don't_ take it."

"I know that," Naruto said. He huffed, still upside down, and crossed his arms.

"You don't know that," Kakashi said. "You _think_ you know it, but the reason I'm telling you is because actually _you don't_ know it."

Naruto made a feral sound. "I do too know it!"

Sasuke walked over to me. While I'd been out, he'd recovered. "He got you too?" He asked.

"Yeah," I said. I was thankful for my brute rating; I was hurting, but if I'd been thrown around like this in my last life it would have killed me. Even just his grabbing my foot to stop me from hitting the tree would have been enough to snap my neck from the whiplash.

"He made it seem so easy. Is that the power of a jounin?" Sasuke asked. "We need to get the bells. I… that man… I _need to_ … do you understand? That night if I just… if I could…" Sasuke wasn't making much sense. The alarm started ringing and that broke him from his rambling. Sasuke slumped, his head hanging. "… too late. Damn."

* * *

"Mmm. This is good," Kakashi said. He took another bite of rice. "This is really good… I'd let you try some, but you didn't get the bells."

"Stop it sensei! This is cruel. You're not suppose to torture me," Naruto whined. His stomach growled audibly and he squirmed against the ropes. It wasn't so loud that I would have heard it in my last life, but ninja had senses worthy of a minor Thinker rating. "Can I just have a bite? Please sensei! Please please pleasssseeeee!"

"Well. I suppose." Kakashi waited for a few moments and Naruto's face lit up like it was Christmas. "I suppose that I should keep to my rules. You can't have any."

Naruto's face fell. "Awhh! Come on! Don't be a jerk. We were awesome. I was like- _charge_ and Sasuke was… well I guess he was just _hiding_? But Tera had all these insects and…" Naruto calmed down a bit and shot me a nervous glance. "… uh. I mean, we deserve to eat? Oh!" Naruto looked back to Kakashi. "So you know, Tera killed your dog, it wasn't me. She must have been lying about liking them. Really she's a dog killer. First the bugs and now killing dogs, she's kind of creepy, neh?"

"I'm sure she had her reasons," Kakashi said. He took another bite of his food.

I always did. I'd disrupted a projection-dog, I hadn't killed his dog. Naruto was being dramatic and Kakashi wasn't going along with it.

"Wow. You're okay with that? Huh, well I guess since we did so awesome you're willing to forgive her, right? And give me food? Oh and we can be gennin now and go on real missions too!"

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "Did so well? You were pathetic. I'll admit that Sasuke showed a great deal of talent, but he abandoned the rest of his team. Tera showed promise too, at first, but she toppled like a stack of cards the moment I dealt with her insects. Then… there's you…" He glared at Naruto. "Being a ninja isn't a game. You acted like a child." He swept his gaze over all of us. "That goes for all of you though. You fought like a bunch of brats."

Sasuke snapped, proving Kakashi right in the most blatant way possible. He charged at Kakashi. Kakashi had been lecturing almost casually before, a little stern, but not actually angry.

That changed as he slammed Sasuke into the floor and pinned him to the ground. "You think this is all about you," he said, sounding annoyed. "You don't know what it means to be a ninja. You thinks it a game too, huh? Did you even consider why we put you on squads for one moment?"

Groups better than not group? It seemed too obvious. I stayed silent. He was asking a rhetorical question.

Naruto didn't pick up on that. "Argh," Naruto groaned. "How are _we_ supposed to know why you put us on squads?"

"It's so basic. _Teamwork!_ " Kakashi sighed.

Naruto reeled back. Then he smiled. "We totally worked together though! So you definitely should give us food."

"Naruto," Kakashi said. "You ignored your teammates instructions. She at least tried to work with you. But Sasuke? You were too arrogant to even give Naruto a chance. You left him behind. A gennin is supposed to have an instinctive grasp for teamwork and that's something that the two of you lack. If you two had worked together you might have even gotten the bells."

No. We definitely wouldn't have gotten them. The only way we would have had a chance was what he had said from the beginning- maybe we could have won if we fought to kill him; tunneling into his eyes instead of trying to drain his chakra. Using the ninja wire to slice him in half instead of just to cut off retreat. Pre-firing the kunai scrolls when I had thrown the weapons to cut off his angles of retreat, so that when he substituted away from Sasuke's weapons he died even as he re-materialized.

It wasn't worth it though. Killing someone to get two bronze bells wasn't worth it all.

"Well, anyway," Kakashi said. "It's over."

I did have a question. I hadn't asked it earlier and I probably should have. It would be good to know now, even if it was a bit late. "Just a guess, but you don't have an apprentice, right? So the two bells thing was a head game."

"Exactly. I purposely pitted you against each other to see how you would react. When individuals put themselves against the squad, this can lead to failure and death."

Kakashi shoved Sasuke into the ground and stepped away. He took a breath. Got control of himself. He turned away from us. "Do you see that black stone out there?" He asked. "That's where we record the names of Konoha's heroes."

"That's it that it's it that's it! Now I know!" Naruto wiggled around and grinned, his face a picture of joy. I tuned him out. I was familiar with monuments that honored people that had fallen in battle. Back on Earth Bet, we had them too. Rachel had ended up sacrificing her dog's lives to save mine. Later she had written their names on a stone like the one I was looking at. My mind caught up with what Naruto was saying and a surge of anger tore through me. "… engraved on that stone! I'm not going live and die for nothing like a dog! I'm going to be a hero! _A hero!_ "

"A _dog's_ name deserves to be written on that stone more than yours _ever_ will," I said, my voice sounding alien and cruel, I'd given an order to my bugs to accent my words with chips and hisses without even thinking about it. "Shut up and think before you speak dead last."

Everyone stared at me, stunned by the uncharacteristic hostility.

Stupid body. It's reflexes were kicking in again. I blinked. My eyes were wet getting wet. It was so dumb of me too. I'd hinted that I'd had dogs die heroically to save my life. It was the truth, but there was no explanation for it that I could give. Maybe I could try to play it off as dogs protecting me in a genjutsu, if Kakashi got suspicious?

"Hey! That's not true! I'm awesome, believe it. I can definitely get my name engraved on that stone."

Yeah. Honestly, he could. Him dying wouldn't surprise me.

"The people on that stone are a… special kind of hero," Kakashi said. He was letting my outburst go, but I had a feeling he wouldn't forget about it.

Naruto though? He forgot about my untactful blunt honesty as to how he compared with Rachel's dogs almost instantly. "Huh? What kind of heroes are they? Come on tell us tell us tell us."

Kakashi looked away and stared at the stone. He'd lost someone too.

"They were killed in action Naruto," I said, careful to keep my tone even. Just yesterday, I'd been happy for Naruto ignoring social cues. Now I wasn't. "They… died."

Naruto calmed down. "Oh." He looked my way and I didn't meet his eyes. He got it. He'd made the connection. "Sorry… I didn't… I didn't think…"

He never did. I didn't say it. I didn't want to antagonize him. I shouldn't have said as much as I had. The reminder of the sacrifice, then hearing Naruto unknowingly mock it- it had struck a nerve.

"This is a memorial stone," Kakashi said. "The names of my closest friends are engraved here."

Cape life. It wasn't always pretty. Sometimes it was just cops and robbers. Other times Behemoth killed a friend. No one spoke for a while. We just looked at the stone.

Eventually Kakashi turned back to face us. Something had changed in Kakashi's bearing. "Alright. I've made a decision," Kakashi said. "I'm not going to fail you…"

What? That was stupid. We didn't deserve to pass. The boys weren't ready and even if I was, I was still only thirteen. Kakashi was right. The implication he was giving that the cape life, shinobi life, was a serious one, and that the boys were just brats - it was completely correct. They shouldn't be graduated. It was ridiculous to think they should be.

Sasuke smirked. Naruto started kicking his legs up and down then babbling. "Wait," he said. "That means- then that means all three of us- all three of us-"

"Yes," Kakashi said. He smiled. "I'm going to give out two bells, and so it's going to be up to all three of you _which of you goes back to the academy._ I'm not going to be the one who fails you. You'll do that to each other."

He was set on having two of us, not three. He said he didn't have an apprentice though. So this was a head game, right? Probably he wanted us all to vote for the other two teammates.

"Naruto who do you want to pass?" Kakashi asked.

"Tera and I!" He turned and stuck out his tongue at Sasuke.

"Sasuke how about you?"

"Myself obviously." He paused for a moment. Looked at Naruto who was still sticking his tongue out. Then he looked back to me. "Tera."

"Tera?" Kakashi asked. "Who do you want your teammates to be."

"Pick me!" Naruto grinned at me. "Pick me! Pick me! Come on you know you want to!"

"What happens if there's a tie?" Right now there was one vote for each boy and two votes for me. If I voted for both boys, then we would all tie.

Kakashi frowned. "Don't get smart with me," he said. "Choose who you want to pass. I make the rules, you follow them. Got it?"

I was convinced he would pass us all if I voted for the boys. The fact that he had already admitted the two bells were just part of a head game was what convinced me of that.

But… I wasn't deluding myself before. It was hard to put it into words. Sasuke, always there to try to tear down Naruto. Naruto, doing his best impression of a hyperactive ten year old and lashing out for attention. They were _kids_. Sasuke was so childish he'd just had a fit of rage and tried to attack Kakashi and the idea that Naruto could be called mature was laughable. They weren't ready for this. The academy had been wise to move back the graduation age. Sure, kids with powers could be strong. That didn't change that they were kids though. It didn't mean they were ready for the responsibilities they would have.

Sometimes a child could be an adult and other times an adult might as well be a child. But in the case of Naruto and Sasuke, they were kids in the ways that mattered. I knew what it meant to be a cape. Hearing deceased echo-forth from an armband. Over and over. Death after death. I knew what it was like to have to choose whether or not to shoot my friend's baby sister or risk him getting emotionally compromised at the wrong moment. I knew what it was like to shoot Aster. I knew what sort of dreams you had afterwards.

The best argument I had for giving the two boys a pass was Regent and Imp. They had been immature too. It had been different though. They did it as a coping mechanism, it was a way for them to stay healthy. Naruto and Sasuke were immature in a destructive way. It brought everyone around them down.

Beyond that, when it really came down to it? Could I trust that Sasuke would step out and risk dying for Naruto? No. Sasuke was _nothing_ compared to Alec. Moreover, Naruto had already shown that he didn't know when it was time to drop the childish antics. We were throwing around real weapons, but he was still goofing off.

I shook my head. "What happens if I vote that we shouldn't pass?" I asked.

I wished I had my old teams. My old friends. They weren't immature like these two were. Tears were leaking from eyes. Stupid body. Really. I wasn't just saying that. My emotional self-control wasn't as high as I knew it would be when I was older. I was a kid too, not in my mind, but in my body.

I wished my entire world wasn't gone. I wanted the internet back. I hated Konoha. The slavery. The allowance of the massacres going on in Mist. The training of child soldiers. This world was sick. It was so sick.

Show myself skilled? Someone tries to take me from my dad. I actually step up and do the chunnin's job for them? Get punished for stopping bullying.

In a better world, in my world, these kids would have been protected. They would have had an actual therapist, at the very least. There would have been people there to help them with their issues, like Jessica had helped me with mine.

People would have been pushing to slow them down, true. Back then it had seemed annoying to me, but now that I saw it done a different way I knew they had it right.

"Do you think that your team should fail?" Kakashi asked.

"Yeah. I vote we all fail. What happens next?"


	13. Chapter 13

Sasuke had been pushing himself to his feet, but at my words he stopped moving. He went as still as a Nara deer frightened by the sudden snapping of a twig. He didn't understand where I was coming from. Couldn't understand, it didn't fit his worldview. Naruto couldn't either, but that didn't stop him from reacting. "What?" Naruto's mouth dropped open and he shook his head rapidly, trying to deny his impending failure. "No. You can't do that."

Naruto looked away from me to Kakashi, imploring. "Tell her Kakashi-sensei! Tell her she can't do that."

Kakashi's eye was trained on me. If he heard Naruto, it didn't show on his face. Naruto wasn't happy with that. "Wait! I change my vote. I vote for Sasuke," Naruto said, his words coming out so fast that they blurred together. Naruto kicked out his legs a bit again and again as he spoke. He was getting excited. "Sasuke quick, she can't stop us. Change your vote, change your vote, change your vooote."

After a few seconds had passed, Sasuke turned his head towards Naruto. Then Sasuke pulled himself together, his walls coming back up as his true reactions were hid behind a wall of feigned indifference. He stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets. "I'm with the dead last," Sasuke said. "If Tera doesn't feel she's ready to be a gennin, fine. Send her back to the academy." Sasuke narrowed his eyes at me. Then he looked away from me and made a grunting noise. Hn. "Crying like a little girl. Pathetic."

Back on Earth Bet, rep had been a big concern for me. A lot of what I had done had been about managing it. I'd actually sacked the PRT headquarters just to send a message after my secret identity was outed. Despite the fact that I did care about rep, I didn't care what Sasuke thought of me. Even if I did, it wouldn't have mattered much; I didn't have butterflies under my control anymore, which made pandering to little kids a bit more difficult. Kakashi had called both Sasuke and Naruto brats and I didn't disagree with him.

Kakashi was a different story. I had decided not to have my bugs eat my emotion. The fact that it had a tell meant that not only would doing so reveal that I was having those emotions, it would also reveal which ones I was trying to hide from him. I did care about how he saw me. I didn't like that I had tears in my eyes in front of him. However, it served my interests to be seen as emotional by Kakashi, so it didn't feel like something that I needed to fix even though I wasn't happy with it. I didn't want to pass.

Maybe it was arrogant of me, but I really didn't feel like I needed Kakashi. Sasuke and Naruto saw staying in the accelerated program as fundamentally necessary to their advancement, but I didn't. I wasn't an ant that needed to follow the pheromone trail of the ant in front of them in order to make forward progress. Chakra wasn't magic, it was just a power that didn't explain itself. If my classmates weren't so superstitious about the whole thing, they would probably feel the same way. The mysterious Breaker aspect of chakra applied to our extremities was a perfect example of that. Obviously the Mover aspect to our powerset needed a necessary secondary power that allowed us to have traction even at high speeds. Using it to climb took very little in the way of creativity. The only complicated step was the first one. Before I'd learned the leaf sticking exercise, I'd had no idea where to begin when it came to learning how to walk up walls.

"When I was your age I thought you like did," Kakashi said. "I was arrogant and full of pride. I didn't think my teammates were ready to be ninja. Do you know what I learned?"

I didn't, but it was kind of obvious that he was about to tell me they were the best thing since sliced bread and that if I only embraced the magical Will of Fire and worked to be a heartless killer for the local despot and my fellow child soldiers, I would be able to see past my pride and realize that actually the Leaf definitely needed it's Endbringer container as one of it's weapons and that I should probably hook up with Sasuke to help him repopulate his clan, because their eyes made skill thieves like Victor seem pathetic.

Fuck that. I took a cue from my memories of Tattletale. "That watching them die hurt, that you were good but not good enough, and that no matter what you did you would never be able to forget it. I'm not you Kakashi. I don't want to repeat your mistakes. Fail us. Sasuke just attacked you, because you pointed out an area he needs to improve in. Last week Naruto vandalized the Hokage Monument. We're not ready."

* * *

I'd seen the Hokage before. It was kind of hard to avoid having seen him, because of how close the Hokage Tower was to the Konoha Shinobi Academy. Meeting him in his office was different though. I got to see up close his liver-spotted and heavily wrinkled skin. He was old and not even the pointed red Kage hat proclaiming him the fire shadow could disguise that he should have retired years ago. I respected him a little, because for all that he ran a disgusting village, he was at least wise enough to have recognized that he needed to step down. Unfortunately, the hero who had replaced him was gone.

Meeting the Hokage in his office with the rest of Team Seven after Kakashi had failed us didn't truly surprise me. I was used to things like this - Winslow, the Protectorate, and the various PRT Directors had given me a good sense of what to expect from people in charge. Even my prison warden hadn't been willing to extend a bit of trust and let me keep bugs around.

What did throw me for a loop was finding that Iruka was there too. I frowned at Iruka and he saw that. He smiled at me. "Don't worry Tera. I'm not about to let you get failed, just because Kakashi doesn't want a gennin team."

Seriously? Iruka had always struck me as a mediocre teacher. He was one of the teacher's that was more obvious about disliking Naruto. Seeing him step up to bat for our team was out of character for him and I wasn't sure where it was coming from. It was also something I didn't actually want. "We deserve to fail," I said. "You're not doing me any favors. I'm the one who argued that Kakashi should fail us."

Iruka took a deep breath. "Tera, I know things haven't gone well between us, but I'm not your enemy here-"

"Then prove it. Drop this," I interrupted. "This is a farce. Don't try to reward our bad behavior. All I'm asking is for you to do your job."

The Hokage cleared his throat. "Iruka came to me with his evaluation of your team's skills, Kakashi. To here him tell it, Tera should be a chunnin and Sasuke is one of the most talented students he has ever taught. Meanwhile, Naruto this year's so-called dead last captured his own chunnin instructor when the man tried to defect from the village. So… what exactly made you decide to fail _this_ team?"

"I gave them the usual bell test. They failed." Kakashi shrugged.

"You didn't mention that-" Kakashi held up his hand, indicating that I should stop talking. So I did.

"I've been considering it further," Kakashi said. "It occurs to me that it's rather unfair to Naruto and Sasuke to have a test that was impossible to pass from the very beginning. Tera was trying to leave this team before I ever tested her."

"Hmm. Then perhaps another test, but without her interference?" The Hokage steepled his fingers.

Sasuke smirked.

Three hours later we were team seven and I was looking down at the transfer request and the red denied stamped over the top of it. I was trapped on a team with emotional thirteen year old boys.

What did this mean? Did I have to be the team mom?

I considered the question for a moment. Let the weight of responsibility settle over me.

Not the weight of being a team mom. No. I was a cape, not a housewife - Kakashi could be the team mom. He was the adult and he couldn't prove otherwise.

Sasuke and Naruto were my responsibility now, like Dinah before them. I was on Sasuke's team and Konoha had failed to do their job. So I would have to do it for them.

I needed to kill Itachi.


	14. Chapter 14

Usually fuinjutsu scrolls were furled up to reduce the amount of space they took, since sealing arrays could actually get impractically long, so much so that the more complicated techniques like the one that had resurrected me required an entire clearing to write out even when done by an expert. As a result, when I put up a fuinjutsu scroll in my room, it took up a lot of space.

I'd unfurled it and then used a handful of senbon to secure it to the wall of my room. It stretched all the way from the floor to very near the ceiling and it had taken me a good while to write the entirety of it out.

It wasn't a complicated fuinjutsu though. I just didn't have a handle on shrinking it down yet. I knew it could get much smaller, but I was new to this. So I was proud of my work anyway. Not that it was my work alone - the seal wasn't an invention of mine. It wasn't even close to an invention. It was as standard a fuinjutsu as there was. The basic sealing fuinjutsu - it made a _pocket dimension_ where an item could be stored. Tinker powers were _insane_ like that. Pocket dimension? Too basic to keep out of the hands of a gennin. Put it in the introductory material, but leave out how to put a bijju inside until the kids get older.

That was probably something they only shared with chunnin. Fucking Tinkers.

My impression that fuinjutsu was broken started in the academy when they introduced us to the jutsu that let you swap places with a fuinjutsu sealing array with just the use of a few hand-signs and the caveat that the array was large enough to be easily noticed and only single use. Graduating to gennin had only made me more annoyed with the art.

Naturally, I was delighted to be learning it.

I'd set things up so that the seal's activation condition was a timer. The mechanism was pretty simple. You put the chakra that was going to activate it in one part of the seal and you put the chakra that would keep it from activating in another. The second area was intentionally designed to leak out the chakra at a well-defined rate. If you knew that rate, you could use it to figure out how much chakra it would take before it would all leak out. Once it was all gone? The chakra in the first area could flow to the rest of the seal, activating it. In other words, Tinker Bullshit meant that removing things from pocket dimensions after a user-specified timer had run out was pretty simple.

The timer went off early the next morning. When it did, chakra flared and a bell not unlike the one Kakashi had used to test us appeared just in front of the scroll. Gravity asserted itself a moment later and it fell, jingling, to the floor.

I had made a makeshift alarm. Not terribly original, but I was taking learning fuinjutsu seriously and so I was trying to make a point of getting more practical with its use in order to grow more comfortable and familiar with it. I wasn't the sort of person that only used my powers in combat situations.

Kind of the opposite really.

My eyes snapped open when the bell rang, but even though I had been asleep I still knew exactly what had happened. For one I had been the one to make the makeshift alarm. So the fact that it had worked like I had hoped it would wasn't surprising to me. For another my insects considered a seal going off beside me while I was asleep to be something worthy of reporting back to their hive-person, so I actually remembered watching chakra flare spontaneously from an indiscernible, but probably extra-dimensional, source and the way the bell had fallen and clattered against the ground moments later.

I hopped out of bed and headed for the kitchen. Meanwhile, bugs flew out of me, heading for my closet to lay out my ninja gear and clothing. A simple dark green sleeveless shirt, an even darker green pair of pants, pouches full of ninja tools like kunai, ninja wire, shuriken, and then of course my sandals.

Sandals weren't as bad as one might imagine. If I wasn't using chakra to assist my traction, I was doing it wrong. So wearing sandals was actually a useful training aid, since it _forced_ good practice.

Bugs beat me to the cupboard and were already pulling out bread by the time I entered the kitchen. As an Aburame we had a lot of insects on our clan grounds, most of which were carefully cultivated for our own use. So when I got into the kitchen I lathered the bread in a honey spread that had been collected from our bees.

I yawned as I came back into my room then sat down on the bed, which had been folded by my bugs in my absence. Then I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, took a bite of toast, and realized I didn't have some place to set it down while getting dressed. So I stuck it to the back of my hand with chakra.

While I got out of my pants and switched into the ones that my bugs had laid out for me, other bugs began bringing me a plate from the kitchen. They landed on the bed as I pulled on my pants. Then I took the bread hanging from the back of my palm and set it on the saucer. Finally I changed my shirt, picked up the saucer, and continued eating my pre-breakfast snack.

I started feeding my bugs too, but I did it differently than usual. Kakashi had made it clear to me that my bugs had a tell that he could pick up on. They got more agitated when they were eating my emotion-ladened chakra. So instead of just feeding them normally, I started drawing on emotion. Desire to kill, pushed into chakra, then fed to my bugs for breakfast. Anger at the village for how sick it was, pushed into chakra, then fed to my bugs for breakfast. Sorrow for all that I had lost, pushed into chakra, then fed to them.

I had my bugs keeps track of each other as they ate. The bugs that were good at handling their emotional diet, I would allow to continue breeding. The ones that weren't I would be sending on glorious missions. Instead of staying close to their hive, I would send them out into the wider world to explore for the sake of the hive. I wasn't so heartless that I just had the other bugs rip them to shreds. I was a benevolent ruler and not one to waste my resources by administering them foolishly. Just because they weren't being bred didn't mean that I considered them unworthy of life.

I yawned, feeling much more tired then I had before. Having my bugs eat me chakra wasn't the sort of thing that gave me energy. However, it was important. My bugs and I had a symbiotic relationship. Eating my chakra helped them to be stronger, because it was of higher quality then they would otherwise get. It let them grow with me and made them more dangerous over time, especially compared to wild trump bugs who risked death when trying to eat from more refined chakra sources. Meanwhile, I gained their assistance and loyalty.

Especially since I tended to breed obedience to me into them; bugs being unwilling to sacrifice themselves by hurling themselves into the way of jutsu had been a problem. It was the sort of thing that had nearly ended the world when humanity had done so badly in it's fight against Scion. Sometimes, the best tactic was to throw away your life just to delay something that was infinitely stronger than you were. Sometimes they were people. I shoved more emotion into my chakra and gave it to the bugs. I didn't want to think about the things I had done.

Mornings were a lot nicer for me than they had once been. I didn't have to take a bath or spend time in the shower. Having bugs was really nice. I'd used to have to bathe and having to literally let myself drain afterward had been infuriating.

So I'd come up with a solution. Now I just let my bugs eat the grime and the like off of me. It tickled, but it was efficient. I still washed sometimes, but they were more then capable of handling most cleaning and being in liquids was pretty annoying for me what with all the holes all over my body from the tunnels that my insects had made.

Shibi had been a little creeped out by it at first, but some of the clan was starting to come around to the idea I'd gotten from cleaner-shrimp in my previous life. It would probably become standard practice within a generation or two for Aburame to bathe themselves with insects, once babies started being bathed in pools of trump bugs rather than water, and everyone became acclimated to my innovation. No one liked waiting for their tunnels to drain, after all and shoving plugs in all the holes wasn't that much better.

So yeah. Awesome start to the morning. I could skip straight to the morning jog. Hopefully that would wake me up enough to do some light training before I met up with the team.

* * *

An hour later and after having worked out and eaten a bit more, I showed up at the training ground to meet up with the rest of the team. Mindful that Kakashi was starting to develop a habit of being late, I brought along my fuinjutsu reading material to the training ground.

I had also worn a dark green sleeved jacket, because I wasn't exercising right now and there was no way I wanted to be sleeveless this early in the morning if I wasn't also going to be active. Also, Naruto was really immature. He would point at my arms and make me feel worse about myself, which didn't engender the sort of headspace I wanted to be in on my first day on the job.

Sasuke glared at me when I arrived a few minutes late. "Since when are you ready to be a gennin, cry baby?"

Good morning to you too Sasuke. How was I even supposed to make peace with the boy? I'd kind of tried to destroy his dream. Not really, but that was how he saw it.

I didn't see a way to make peace and so I considered other options. I could treat him like I had Bitch's old mook; hurt him for disrespecting me. Another option was honesty. We had passed because the Leaf thought kids like Sasuke were ready to be gennin, so obviously a few tears weren't something they were going to take exception to. I could apologize? Or maybe I could do something a bit better than that. Appeal to his ego somehow.

Then I realized he didn't understand. He didn't understand why I had done what I had done. Not really. Maybe I could get across to him exactly why I had done what I had done? Put it in terms that he could relate too: For you, the day you lost your clan was the worst day of your life. For Itachi it was a Tuesday. Tuesday comes weekly for ninja. Good luck surviving the year.

I decided to go with something less confrontational. "Maybe I'm not."

I walked to the edge of the tree line and sat down to read.

Sasuke watched me walk away, but quickly settled on turning away from me and ignoring me like I was one of the girls that had a crush on him.

While the boys yawned at each other, trying to keep their drooping eyes open, I read about how to recharge seals whose chakra battery had drained, effectively, how to add time to a fuinjutsu timer by re-adding chakra to the portion that delayed its activation.

The kids nodded off for a while and I made a mental note to seal some blankets next time I was out here so I could cover the little tikes the next time it happened, but then vetoed that note because I really didn't want to be the team mom. They were pretty cute though, innocent pudgy scow-less child faces…

No. Definitely not. Once long ago on the Undersiders, Brian had tended to bring the team coffee and the like in the morning. I'd do something like that. No blankets. Caffeine to keep them awake instead. It wasn't perfect. Giving Naruto caffeine sounded like the first step to a Simurgh plot. It was better than blankets though.

I went back to reading.

"He's not showing up," Sasuke said nearly two hours later.

Naruto yawned. "This sucks. I want to go back to bed. Where's Kakashi-sensei at anyway?"

My bugs hadn't reported him watching us and I had them spread out all across the training ground. I didn't mention it though. I had an idea for how to start getting the team working together, but the first step was separating Sasuke and Naruto. I didn't want to get too social with them until then.

The sun was out and I would call it morning as opposed to the crack of dawn when Kakashi finally decided to show up. Thanks to the bugs that I had watching his house, I actually knew he was on his way early enough that I got to choose a good place to stop before rolling up the fuinjutsu scroll and handing it off to my bugs to carry home.

Kakashi hadn't been busy; he had been sleeping. He looked very well rested when he showed up to meet us. In my past life I had learned that the early birds really did tend to gobble up my worms though. So I wasn't complaining.

Naruto glared at him. "You're late!"

"Sorry, it was the cat from last time. He was watching my house, so I couldn't leave," Kakashi explained.

"Liar!" Naruto accused, pointing his finger at him.

"Alright kids," Kakashi said, ignoring Naruto. "Today's our first official day as team seven. So lets go over what I'm going to be expecting of you today and most days. First off, we meet here in the mornings. Next? We train. Running. Katas. Weights. Target practice. Chakra control exercises. You'll be working on the fundamentals, since all of you suck."

"Awhh. Come on Kakashi-sensei. I want to learn a bunch of really cool ninjutsu. Can we do that in the mornings instead? Can we? Can we?"

"After our morning exercise," Kakashi said, ignoring Naruto. "We'll be heading to the Hokage Tower to pick up missions. Hopefully, we can get in at least two each day before we break for lunch. Though probably we can do more. After lunch we'll head back to the training field and we'll either do more missions or we'll head back here and work on developing each of your abilities. If we ever do get around to learning ninjutsu, that's the time it'll be done. For today though? We'll be spending more time planning out your training then actually doing it, since I think it's important to have an idea of how you want to develop as a shinobi."

* * *

The reception desk was manned by the same chunnin that had been handling our applications two days ago. When he saw me, he smiled. "See what did I tell you. You passed!"

"We're here to pick up a mission," Kakashi said. "So you can ignore the gossip."

The chunnin laughed and we headed deeper into the Hokage tower until we reached a large open room where four tables were laid out in a semi-circle that faced the door. Three of the tables had chunnin sitting at them and going from left to right they had paper labels hanging from them with the labels A, B, and C respectively. The A table had less mission scrolls available then the B table which in turn had less than the C table.

The fourth table was what really caught my attention, and not because as the D table that held D ranks it had the most missions on it. No. The thing that made the fourth table stand out was the person handing out the missions.

The Hokage was there.

This man ruled the Village Hidden in the Leaves, because he was considered the village's strongest ninja. Which was a stupid basis for rule, but apparently when the strongest guy decides he's in charge that's just how it goes. He was nicknamed the God of Shinobi, which was perhaps the most arrogant nickname I'd ever heard.

Of course, much like Hero, he kind of backed it up. Here he was, one of the oldest in a profession where dying at Naruto and Sasuke's age wasn't exactly uncommon. Maybe he had survivors bias. He had lived, so fuck the other kids, obviously that's normal. Statistics? What's that? I kill people with superpowers.

Seeing him here, sitting at a table filled with D rank mission scrolls? It caught me off guard. Though now that I realized he was here, it occurred to me that today wasn't just any day. It was the day that many fresh gennin would be taking their first mission. The Hokage wanted to be the person who gave the new gennin that very first mission.

"Hello Kakashi," the Hokage said. His voice held no trace of guilt for his part in perpetuating the training of child soldiers. Listening him to speak, there was no hint of disapproval for what the Hyugga were doing either. He greeted Kakashi instead of addressing something of actual importance, like the bloodline purges in Mist.

I didn't like him.

Especially after him railroading me onto a team with two thirteen year olds. Well, I was thirteen too, but that was different- I wasn't counting myself with the two boys.

"Honorable Lord Hokage," Kakashi said. He gave a respectful nod of his head to the village ruler. "Team seven, reporting for our first mission. What do you have for us today?"

The Hokage smiled from underneath his pointed kage hat. "We've got lumber to carry from the docks by the river to a construction site on the other end of town, several hundred sealed scrolls filled with food product from out of town to both deliver and unseal, and a mock mission where you're team can try to hunt down a missing animal."

"Huh?" Naruto said. "What kind of bogus missions are those?"

"Those are the D rank missions you might be going on today," the Hokage told his Endbringer container.

"Don't worry Naruto. Today's just orientation. We'll get more interesting missions soon," I said. I wasn't sure if that was true, but I figured it was the sort of thing that would keep him from making a scene.

"Oh! That's good cause I want real missions, believe it. That stuff is all so boring. You should know that I'm totally ready for saving princesses and stuff you old geezer."

Fuck. Thankfully, the Hokage wanted his Endbringer container to like him. The despot chuckled. "If a princess needs saving I'll be sure to let you know. Kakashi?"

Kakashi reached his hand out to accept a scroll. "I suppose we'll do the mock mission. Unless… it isn't to catch a cat is it?"

The Hokage straightened and met Kakashi's eyes. "I'm afraid it is Kakashi. I'm afraid it is."

Kakashi glanced at Naruto. "I'm not sure we're ready for this mission Hokage-sama. Best if you give me the one for moving lumber."

"A wise choice," the Third Hokage said, his eyes glittering with amusement at Naruto's expense. It was unprofessional. Maybe even cruel.

When we were leaving the tower Naruto drew closer to me. His voice was low. "Tera… just what sort of _cat_ is Kakashi dealing with?"

"He's lying to you," I said. "There is no cat." Kakashi shot me a dirty look. "He thinks you're gullible."

"Gullible?" Naruto asked. "What's that mean?"

How to put it in terms he would understand. "You know when you do a prank and you get caught and the teacher tells you not to do it again and you agree that you won't do it even though your going too," I asked.

"Oh yeah. That happens all the time," Naruto said. He chuckled and smiled a bit while staring into the air. Probably remembering past pranks. "What does that have to do with a gullible though?"

"If the teacher believed you? That was them being gullible."

"Oh," Naruto said. "You mean kind of like you when I pretended to not know what the word meant?"

Fuck. I was officially a Naruto prank target. Thankfully, his opening salvo was fairly tame. Hopefully he wouldn't henge into me and paint my face on the Hokage monument. Or ask Sasuke out. Or try to arrange for my tunnels to be filled with glue. Getting back on Naruto's good side needed to happen sooner rather than later.

Naruto gave me a smug grin worthy of Lisa.

"Nice try dead last, but I'm not buying it. You didn't know what gullible meant until she told you." I wasn't sure if what Sasuke said was true.

"Sasuke!" Naruto groaned. "She totally fell for it. Why did you have to ruin it?"

* * *

After doing two missions and eating lunch, Kakashi brought us back to the training field and plopped us down in front of him.

"I have an idea of what I want to work on with each of you, but I'm also curious how _you_ want to guide your own development. We're a team and so we're going to have this discussion together. Lets start things off." Kakashi looked to me. "Tera, I want to know how you hope I'll help you to become a better kunoichi."

I'd actually given this a bit of thought. "Have you heard of the Puppeteer Sasori of the Red Sands from Sunagakure?"

"I have," Kakashi said. A thread of chakra snaked out from his hand and snatched a kunai from his ninja gear pouch. Then it tossed it into the air and he caught it. "You're looking to become a puppeteer? That surprises me."

I shook my head, letting him know I didn't actually plan to become a puppeteer. "You're the Copy Ninja. You're famous for copying other people's most prized jutsu. I've been thinking about Sasori for a while. Mainly, I was wondering how he managed to control over a hundred puppets at the same time as if he was only controlling one. I suspect he has a secret technique that lets him multi-task. Something less obvious than a clone jutsu. I'm hoping you'll help me to recreate it… and maybe keep it secret too, so it's something that gives me an edge that others can't reproduce?"

Kakashi nodded. "Alright. It's an interesting idea. I can't make any promises, since the Sharingan plays a big part in how I manage to copy techniques. However, I'll spend some time thinking about it at the very least. Anything else? Hopefully something concrete rather than theoretical?"

"Yeah. I'd also like to learn fuinjutsu. I'd rather specialize in that then the use of insects, long term. Especially if we can work out a way to apply seals via my colony?"

"Hmmm…" Kakashi frowned. "Well you're certainly proposing an interesting development path. It's actually _very_ different from what I was thinking. Was there anything else?"

"I have other ideas, but I don't want to split my training around too much."

"Okay. Well I have _do_ a few problems with your proposed training for yourself," Kakashi said. "Lets say we succeed. You can multi-task your entire swarm at once and you can lay powerful fuinjutsu with them. What happens next?"

I defect and do whatever I want, because no one would be able to touch me? Get Orochimaru to share how he was planning to become immortal? Resurrect my friends? Leave this reality for one that was less fucked up by abusing my Tinker power? Declare myself Hokage? Honestly there were a lot of options. If I had powerful fuinjutsu, mind control the entire world really wasn't very far out of reach. "I guess I work on other things?" I asked.

Kakashi shook his head. "No. You get sent on missions that need your talents. You face more dangers. You do it earlier than you would have otherwise. You do it when you're still at only chunnin level with your other skills, when people who would usually be taking those tasks are very much your superior in every one of those skills that you're weak in. Are you following?"

"You're saying I'm focusing too much on offensive training?" I wanted to say that he was implying that I was a glass cannon, but no one here used cannons. So the metaphor didn't really work quite as well. "Like I'm an explosion fuinjutsu on rice paper?"

"Not quite, but close enough. Which brings me to what I was thinking I would be teaching you. You have the start of an extremely powerful _defensive_ technique with the way you've taught your bugs to intercept incoming jutsu. I want to build on _that_. I know over a thousand jutsu. I was thinking we would go through each of them until you're unlikely to encounter a jutsu you don't know how to disrupt or which you don't already know that you can't disrupt. How does that sound?"

"Good," I admitted. Very good actually. There were definitely techniques that I didn't know how to block. Especially higher tier ninjutsu that had much more chakra backing it. It was also an idea that I could really respect from Kakashi. Wanting to focus on keeping a thirteen year old safe made sense.

"Alright. The second thing I want to work on is stopping people from negating your bugs. Your clan is pretty well known, so plenty of people have sat down and planned out ways to deal with your insects. I don't want those to catch you off guard. Beyond that? I want to shore up your weaknesses. I'd prefer someone work hard to get around your bugs only to be taken down when you're more dangerous than they anticipated rather than folding like you did when I engaged you in taijutsu."

I thought about what he was saying. If I were to summarize, my suggestions were ways to dramatically improve my ability to use my bugs while becoming very versatile through the use of bullshit fuinjutsu seals. The spirit of _his_ suggestions was going a different way. He wanted to make me the sort of ninja that had a so-called ultimate defense and no weaknesses.

"That sounds good," I said. "But… I'm not so sure about the taijutsu. Maybe kenjutsu instead? The way I see it is that their's always going to be someone better than me at taijutsu, so there's not much point in making it a focus."

"Always better? Nonsense," Kakashi said. "If someone is better than you at taijutsu, you have yourself to blame. Regardless, being skilled at taijutsu is a prerequisite for being good at kenjutsu. But we can add in kenjutsu as soon as I deem you ready."

Brian would disagree. If he was alive. He wasn't though. Ironically, in the end Brian hadn't turned out to keep to that old maxim about fighting away - not after taking Victor and using his skill-thief power to teach himself to fight.

"Sounds good," I said.

"Okay," Kakashi said. "I think we have a good idea of where we're going to be going with your training for a very long time. Sasuke, Naruto, do either of you have any thoughts on what you just heard."

Both boys had been listening intently. Even Naruto. Talk about secret techniques and awesome ninja training was the sort of thing that held his attention in a way that few things did. In some ways, it wasn't even surprising that he struggled to learn basics but then could pull off learning a forbidden jutsu in a day. That was the sort of thing that could actually get him motivated.

"Uh…" Naruto scratched the back of his head. "I… she was trying to tell me to do stuff yesterday with her bugs right? I… didn't always understand what she was asking…"

"Thanks for reminding us," I said. "That's something we _definitely_ need to fix. Sooner rather than later. Also we need to figure to what was messing with your head when you dismissed your clones."

"If thats all the comments you have…" It was. Neither boy brought up anything else. "Lets move on to Sasuke," Kakashi said. "So Sasuke, thoughts on your training?"

"I've already told you my plans. I want to kill a certain someone." His brother. "I want the power to kill him. So give me that power."

It seemed like such a stupid response to a part of me. It wasn't though. It was a cultural thing. My former culture had prized things like creativity and individuality. This one had special words that meant things like my honorable teacher. There was a level of expectation that the teacher would take care of things. Sasuke was basically declaring that he trusted Kakashi to know how to make him strong, there was an undercurrent of respect there that was usually lacking, since Sasuke rarely bothered giving his teachers their due honorific.

Despite that and not for the first time, I was surprised by the lack of creativity and self direction people in Konoha had, at this age anyway. They got shown the leaf sticking exercise and there first reaction wasn't, I wonder if I can climb with this? Or use it to pick up weapons with my feet without anyone noticing? Or use it to improve traction? Or hold multiple weapons at once? Or if the technique can be used to grasp at air? Or a thousand other things.

Instead they just blindly treated it like a mere chakra control exercise. It was actually maddening. They got a _power_ , a weak one like sticking things to themselves, and then instead of breaking out some scrolls and spending the next week or two coming up with novels ways to apply it, they just honed their control over their chakra with it.

My reaction was so opposite to theirs, that the entire academy had felt like a joke at times. Months and months after learning the leaf sticking exercise, we'd go over some famous Cloud ninja who used the sticking technique to fight with eight swords at once. The rest of the class would be like, oooh, ahhh, wow, so novel, and I'd just sort of frown at Shikamaru because why the fuck was he looking up as if something interesting had been said. It made me really envy Itachi for being able to skip out on daycare - though probably he needed to stay what with the going psycho and killing his family thing.

Fucking Leaf village. Stupid Konoha.

Iruka thought he was such a good sensei. I wondered what he would think of what the gloomy bug girl thought of him if I really spoke my mind. He knew I didn't like him. He didn't have any idea just how bad a teacher I thought he was.

Kakashi had frowned at Sasuke's words. So I wasn't the only one who was unsatisfied with Sasuke's answer. "Can you be a little more specific in what you're hoping to learn?"

"I'll need to know kenjutsu and genjutsu. That man. I…" Sasuke looked down. "I need… he said…" He shot a look at me and Naruto, then his fists clenched and he looked back to Kakashi. "Power."

He had called me a cry baby, but my reaction to watching him struggle with his trauma wasn't to think he was a cry baby. Itachi was going to choke to death on bugs after I had them burrow through his eyes. Fuck people who messed with kids. He'd broken the rules. Didn't matter if he didn't know they existed. I fed the rather easily generated killing intent to my bugs for lunch.

Kakashi's voice was gentle. "I'll teach you that and more. I'm familiar with _his_ fighting style. I've even copied it."

Sasuke gave a jerky nod. Naruto didn't say anything. I felt like it would be wrong to say something too. What I'd just heard felt too raw and personal for me to even be here to hear it. It felt more like something he should have been trying and failing to explain to a therapist while the door was locked and there was a promise that there was no recording devices active. It also gave me the context to realize that he had tried to open up with me during the bell test. It had been the same rambling.

I felt like shit. He'd tried to open up to me. Then not even twenty minutes later I had argued for his failure. I didn't feel bad for doing it, but I did feel bad that it had happened. It must have seemed cruel of me. Heartless even. Especially since Sasuke was just a thirteen year old playing at being a cape. I was willing to concede that an argument could be made that reciprocating his trust in me was the better thing to do for him, even when the alternative was him getting into potentially deadly fights. I hadn't understood though. I'd thought he was out of it because of the lightning jutsu, not because he was trying to tell me about the sort of shit that I would expect Jack Slash to put his bother through if he had had one.

Kakashi turned to Naruto next. He took a deep breath as if preparing himself. Then he spoke. "Alright Naruto… let's hear it."

Naruto grinned. "I want to learn a bunch of awesome ninjutsu! Like how to make a forest that attacks people like the first Hokage or even better water dragons like the second. Oh! Shooting lightning would be cool. Can you make orange lightning? Because I'd rather make orange lightning than regular lightning. And I want the ninjutsu you to teach me to be big. Really really _really_ big. That way anyone who sees me fighting has to notice, they can't pretend I'm not there, so they'll need to acknowledge that I'm a somebody."

Yeah. Three guesses why the kid that wanted attention had chosen to learn the mass shadow clone jutsu and then used it to literally fill entire forests with his face when there were probably so many horrendously dangerous jutsu available in the scroll that might even be more effective than the admittedly powerful technique he had chosen to learn.

"Hmm… elemental ninjutsu is a chunnin skill and advanced usage like making a dragon is something that you're only going to see from jounin," Kakashi said. "As for forests, that requires a blood limit. But regardless, I'd rather focus on the basics with you Naruto. Improving your taijutsu. Helping you to think a bit more strategically and tactically. It'll be a lot of review, but you'll be much better for it. I'd also really like to get you used to letting your clones do most of the fighting for you."

I agreed completely with Kakashi's assessment. For Naruto, who could make so many of himself, a slight improvement to his basic skills meant he could call on five hundred clones that were slightly better. There was something to be said for having an _army_ of shinobi who could do the basics. Even when I was planning to try to learn, multi-tasking, had been used by Sasori to gain exactly what Naruto could get _already_ : an army.

"What?" Naruto said. "Wow not cool Kakashi-sensei. You gotta teach me a bunch of cool jutsu, believe it. How else am I gonna be Hokage, huh? The old man knows tons of jutsu and I need to be even better than him. This is serious so please teach me ninjutsu. Please please pleasseee."

"Frankly, you don't have the kind of chakra control to begin learning the jutsu you're asking me to teach you," Kakashi said. "We'll work on fixing that. Then we'll revisit the subject."

"Chakra control! You want me to work on my chakra control? But… that's what the academy teachers were saying…" Naruto was more then a little disappointed.

"I don't know what to tell you Naruto," Kakashi said. "If you want to have a style that revolves around high powered elemental jutsu? You're going to need to be able to convert your chakra to an elemental type. So for now… you'll be learning chakra control and focusing on the basics. Sasuke, Tera, your thoughts?"

"Elemental chakra?" Naruto mouthed silently, frowning.

"Naruto has enough chakra that I can probably help everyone else train for longer by moving it to some of us, though that will probably only come up if were doing chakra intensive training like jutsu practice. Also… I really want Naruto to be able to follow my bug's instructions. Other than that…" Notebooks worth of stuff. If we had his clones carry fuinjutsu explosives, then we had a suicide bomber strategy that might put Iwa bomber-nin to shame. If we had one Naruto learn to be really serious, then maybe we could pop him to spread seriousness to the rest of his clones at key moments. Really, a lot of my ideas depended on the mechanics of his forbidden jutsu. "Another thing, why was Naruto's jutsu a forbidden technique and can we teach Naruto to do whatever got it that rating?"

Kakashi looked to me. "Do you really think he should learn that? After what you told us yesterday?"

I thought about it. "I suppose it depends. I've thought of some pretty scary applications, but… I don't know the limitations of the technique. Can you summon a clone whose weapons are already inside someone?"

Naruto blanched and made a show of scooting further away from me. Damn. Kakashi was right. Naruto probably wasn't ready for that. Actually, it might be that Kakashi had just been deflecting me away from fuinjutsu with talk about ultimate defense. I could see him thinking the same thing about me: that I just wasn't ready for carrying around a few thousand explosive fuinjutsu scrolls with my bugs.

"Nevermind," I said. "I'll give you a notebook later. You can look through it on your own time and share with Naruto anything that you think he should learn."

* * *

 _A/N: I hope everyone is picking up on Taylor making blatantly false claims about her team and the village. She doesn't think Sasuke would ever die for Naruto, but cannon says he would. She doesn't think Naruto knows when to get serious. Cannon says he does. She sees Sarutobi as being for child soldiers, he was involved in pushing back graduation ages. She sees the Hokage as viewing Naruto as a tool, he sees him as his unofficial grandson. From their perspective? They see the glimmers of the powerhouses that team seven will become and think that given a few months the team is probably already ready for the chunnin exam. So Tera isn't super awesome in their eyes. She just the girl on the team is_ _exactly like the arrogant Kakashi who doesn't think the little Obito and Rin are ready, but a lot more willing to fuck over her team to enforce her own ideas of what is right and also so utterly brazenly disrespectful of authority that she goes as far as ripping open emotional wounds to get what she wants._


End file.
